Vices and frailties correct each other, like acids and alkalies. If each vicious man had but one vice, I do not know how the world could go on.

Grace is in a great measure a natural gift; elegance implies cultivation; or something of more artificial character. A rustic, uneducated girl may be graceful, but an elegant woman must be accomplished and well trained. It is the same with things as with persons; we talk of a graceful tree, but of an elegant house or other building. Animals may be graceful, but they cannot be elegant. The movements of a kitten or a young fawn are full of grace; but to call them "elegant" animals would be absurd.

The attendant on William Rufus, who discharged at a deer an arrow, which glanced against a tree and killed the king, was no murderer, because he had no such design. And, on the other hand, a man who should lie in wait to assassinate another, and pull the trigger of a gun with that intent, would be morally a murderer, not the less though the gun should chance to miss fire.

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.

Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well-established authors.

Anger requires that the offender should not only be made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve for that particular wrong which has been done by him.