The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.

An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. If you reject it you are unhappy, if you accept it you are undone.

In the hours of distress and misery, the eyes of every mortal turn to friendship; in the hours of gladness and conviviality, what is our want? It is friendship. When the heart overflows with gratitude, or with any other sweet or sacred sentiment, what is the word to which it would give utterance? A friend.

The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight.

Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel man; it is his love.

When the mind loses its feeling for elegance, it grows corrupt and groveling, and seeks in the crowd what ought to be found at home.

Solitude is the audience-chamber of God.