Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known; and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.

A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died; it was the triumph of hope over experience.

People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.

A minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendor which dazzles the imagination. Whatsoever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill; all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornament dug from among the damps and darkness of the mine.

Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.