The whole power of cunning is privative; to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.

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.

One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past.

Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.

To get a name can happen but to few. A name, even in the most commercial nation, is one of the few things which cannot be bought . It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.

It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in the world.