There are some readers who have never read an essay on taste; and if they take my advice they never will, for they can no more improve their taste by so doing than they could improve their appetite or digestion by studying a cookery-book.

Without religion the highest endowments of intellect can only render the possessor more dangerous if he be ill disposed; if well disposed, only more unhappy.

The three indispensable of genius are: understanding, feeling, and perseverance; the three things that enrich genius are: contentment of mind, the cherishing of good thoughts, and the exercise of memory

From his brimstone bed, at break of day, A-walking the Devil is gone, To look at his little snug farm of the World, And see how his stock went on.

Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world, would be palsied.

The disappointed man turns his thoughts toward a state of existence where his wiser desires may be fixed with the certainty of faith; the successful man feels that the objects which he has ardently pursued fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal spirit; the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, that he may save his soul alive.

Happy it were for us all if we bore prosperity as well and as wisely as we endure adverse fortune.