More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.

In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.

In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.

We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative.

It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.

War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter.

A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.