A critic is never too severe when he only detects the faults of an author. But he is worse than too severe when, in consequence of this detection, be presumes to place himself on a level with genius.

Friendship may sometimes step a few paces in advance of truth.

God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours. A hundred lights in every temple burn, And at each shrine I bend my knee in turn.

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

A man's vanity tells him what is honor, a man's conscience what is justice.

No truer word, save God's, was ever spoken, Than that the largest heart is soonest broken.