Hope is the mother of faith.

A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand.

Was genius ever ungrateful? Mere talents are dry leaves, tossed up and down by gusts of passion, and scattered and swept away; but, Genius lies on the bosom of Memory, and Gratitude at her feet.

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

Many laws as certainly make men bad, as bad men make many laws.

Let me take up your metaphor. Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat or violence or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after. The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious stones, never.

Authors are like cattle going to a fair: those of the same field can never move on without butting one another.