When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.

As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'

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.

The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.

Fancy, when once brought into religion, knows not where to stop. It is like one of those fiends in old stories which any one could raise, but which, when raised, could never be kept within the magic circle.

Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.

A man will never change his mind if he have no mind to change.