Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles.

The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.

Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?

Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.

Some read for style, and some for argument: one has little care about the sentiment, he observes only how it is expressed; another regards not the conclusion, but is diligent to mark how it is inferred; they read for other purposes than the attainment of practical knowledge; and are no more likely to grow wise by an examination of a treatise of moral prudence, than an architect to inflame his devotion by considering attentively the proportions of a temple.

How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die: that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever!

The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.