Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

Such is the pleasure of projecting that many content themselves with a succession of visionary schemes, and wear out their allotted time in the calm amusement of contriving what they never attempt or hope to execute.

Every class of society has its cant of lamentation, which is understood or regarded by none but themselves; and every part of life has its uneasiness, which those who do not feel them will not commiserate. An event which spreads distraction over half the commercial world, assembles the trading companies in councils and committees, and shakes the nerves of a thousand stockjobbers, is read by the landlord and the farmer with frigid indifference.

We often look with indifference on the successive parts of something that, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion.

Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.