Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.

In all political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

To write is, indeed, no unpleasing employment, when one sentiment readily produces another, and both ideas and expressions present themselves at the first summons; but such happiness, the greatest genius does not always obtain; and common writers know it only to such a degree, as to credit its possibility. Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal; for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before.

Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in company of persons higher than themselves.