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

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

The more secure we feel against our liability to any error to which, in fact, we are liable, the greater must be our danger of falling into it.

Sophistry, like poison, is at once detected and nauseated, when presented to us in a concentrated form; but a fallacy which, when stated barely in a few sentences, would not deceive a child, may deceive half the world, if diluted in a quarto volume.

It is an awful, an appalling thought, that we may be, this moment and every moment, in the presence of malignant spirits.

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.

Of all hostile feelings, envy is perhaps the hardest to be subdued, because hardly any one owns it even to himself, but looks out for one pretext after another to justify his hostility.