It is the condition of our present state to see more than we can attain; the exactest vigilance and caution can never maintain a single day of unmingled innocence.

The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things-the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.