Discernment is a power of the understanding in which few excel. Is not that owing to its connection with impartiality and truth? for are not prejudice and partiality blind?

Good-humor is allied to generosity, ill-humor to meanness.

Some characters are like some bodies in chemistry; very good, perhaps, in themselves, yet fly off and refuse the least conjunction with each other.

There is an unfortunate disposition in a man to attend much more to the faults of his companions which offend him, than to their perfections which please him.

Avarice starves its possessor to fatten those who come after, and who are eagerly awaiting the demise of the accumulator.

Surely no man can reflect, without wonder upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter.