A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.

Repentance, however difficult to be practiced, is, if it be explained without superstition, easily understood. Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice from the conviction that it has offended God.

To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

The specualtist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity; and still, as he inquires more, perceives only that he knows less.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.

A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one.