Dogs have not the power of comparing. A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.