Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

Hope is the mother of faith.

I hate false words, and seek with care, difficulty, and moroseness, those that fit the thing.

It is easy to look down on others; to look down on ourselves is the difficulty.

Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.

What is companionship where nothing that improves the intellect is communicated, and where the larger heart contracts itself to the model and dimension of the smaller?

I sometimes think that the most plaintive ditty has brought a fuller joy and of longer duration to its composer that the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian.