Such is our impatience, such our hatred of procrastination, to everything but the amendment of our practices and the adornment of our nature, one would imagine we were dragging Time along by force, and not he us.

We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could.

The habit of pleasing by flattery makes a language soft; the fear of offending by truth makes it circuitous and conventional.

Life and death appear more certainly ours than whatsoever else; and yet hardly can that be called ours, which comes without our knowledge, and goes without it.

Such is our impatience, such our hatred of procrastination, to everything but the amendment of our practices and the adornment of our nature, one would imagine we were dragging Time along by force, and not he us.

The most pernicious of absurdities is that weak, blind, stupid faith is better than the constant practice of every human virtue.

Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition; never to be listened to, and to be listened to always.