The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.

Falsehood is fire in stubble; it likewise turns all the light stuff around it into its own substance for a moment, one crackling blazing moment, and then dies; and all its converts are scattered in the wind, without place or evidence of their existence, as viewless as the wind which scatters them.

How inimitably graceful children are in general-before they learn to dance.

I attended [Sir Humphry] Davy's lectures to renew my stock of metaphors.

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul.

We must follow the old authorities and precedents in criminal matters.

We ought not to extract pernicious honey from poison blossoms of misrepresentation and mendacious half-truth, to pamper the course appetite of bigotry and self-love.