It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke.

Falsehood is difficult to be maintained. When the materials of a building are solid blocks of stone, very rude architecture will suffice; but a structure of rotten materials needs the most careful adjustment to make it stand at all.

To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.

Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry gets the best of the argument.

Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.

The depreciation of Christianity by indifference is a more insidious and less curable evil than infidelity itself.

It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is unobstructive: without the latter it is deceptive.