Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.

I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.

To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others

Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not sometimes be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality.

Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.

Indolence is the devil's cushion.

Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.