An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. If you reject it you are unhappy, if you accept it you are undone.

What is reading but silent conversation?

That which moveth the heart most is the best poetry; it comes nearest unto God, the source of all power.

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.

The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.

The moderate are not usually the most sincere, for the same circumspection which makes them moderate makes them likewise retentive of what could give offence.

The deafest man can hear praise, and is slow to think any an excess.