When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?

We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

The sovereign good of man is a mind that subjects all things to itself and is itself subject to nothing; such a man's pleasures are modest and reserved, and it may be a question whether he goes to heaven, or heaven comes to him; for a good man is influenced by God Himself, and has a kind of divinity within him.

There are no greater wretches in the world than many of those whom people in general take to be happy.

Life is a play.It's not its length,but its performance that counts.

How can a thing possibly govern others when it cannot be governed itself?

It is a youthful failing to be unable to control one's impulses.