In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.

Falsehood, like the dry-rot, flourishes the more in proportion as air and light are excluded.

The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.

It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when persons past forty before they were at all acquainted form together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of old wood to take, there must be a wonderful congeniality between the trees.

It is folly to shiver over last year's snow.

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

Christianity, contrasted with the Jewish system of emblems, is truth in the sense of reality, as substance is opposed to shadows, and, contrasted with heathen mythology, is truth as opposed to falsehood.