Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for never is life so low or so little as when occupied with the present.

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

Ridicule has followed the vestiges of truth, but never usurped her place.

The worse of ingratitude lies not in the ossified heart of him who commits it, but we find it in the effect it produces on him against whom it was committed.

O what a thing is age! Death without death's quiet.

As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.

There is no more certain sign of a narrow mind, of stupidity, and of arrogance, than to stand aloof from those who think differently from us.