Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.

He that is warm for truth, and fearless in its defense, performs one of the duties of a good man; he strenghtens his own conviction, and guards others from delusion; but steadiness of belief, and boldness of profession, are yet only part of the form of godliness.

The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.

The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

It requires but little acquaintance with the heart to know that woman's first wish is to be handsome; and that, consequently, the readiest method of obtaining her kindness is to praise her beauty.

When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was