Passions, as fire and water, are good servants, but bad masters, and subminister to the best and worst purposes.

We never think of the main business of life till a vain repentance minds us of it at the wrong end.

Of all injustice, that is the greatest which goes under the name of law, and of all sorts of tyranny the forcing of the letter of the law against the equity, is the most insupportable.

If we should cease to be generous and charitable because another is sordid and ungrateful, it would be much in the power of vice to extinguish Christian virtues.

He that upon a true principle lives, without any disquiet of thought, may be said to be happy.

It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone what it compares its situation to that can make anyone happy or miserable. Compare it to something better - result envy, frustration and sadness. Compare it to something worse - relief, gratitude and happiness.

The most insupportable of tyrants exclaim against the exercise of arbitrary power.