Superstition is not, as has been defined, an excess of religious feeling, but a misdirection of it, an exhausting of it on vanities of man's devising.

To teach one who has no curiosity to learn, is to sow a field without ploughing it.

Do you want to know the man against whom you have most reason to guard yourself? Your looking-glass will give you a very fair likeness of his face.

He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.

When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamor and abuse by which he is assailed is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the public. And if he is a truly wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is to shine on.

If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.

Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a great good to a less.