We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

We never do evil so thoroughly and heartily as when led to it by an honest but perverted, because mistaken, conscience.

My books are my tools, and the greater their variety and perfection the greater the help to my literary work.

Let your holidays be associated with great public events, and they may be the life of patriotism as well as a source of relaxation and personal employment.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

True religion extends alike to the intellect and the heart. Intellect is in vain if it lead not to emotion, and emotion is vain if not enlightened by intellect; and both are vain if not guided by truth and leading to duty.

Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world.