Successful villany is called virtue.

Greatness stands upon a precipice, and if prosperity carries a man never so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces.

Our life's a moment and less than a moment, but even this mite nature has mockingly humored with some appearance of a longer span.

Virtue needs a director and guide. Vice can be learned even without a teacher.

The first step in a person's salvation is knowledge of their sin.

The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.