History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever.

There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.

The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.

Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards.

Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation.

A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.