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.

We may receive so much light as not to see, and so much philosophy as to be worse than foolish.

There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.

Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of freedom.

Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.

The wise become as the unwise in the enchanted chambers of Power, whose lamps make every face the same colour.

Justice is often pale and melancholy; but Gratitude, her daughter, is constantly in the flow of spirits and the bloom of loveliness.