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

Virtue is presupposed in friendship.

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

Ambition does not see the earth she treads on: The rock and the herbage are of one substance to her.

Politeness is not always a sign of wisdom; but the want of it always leaves room for a suspicion of folly, if folly and imprudence are the same.

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.

We care not how many see us in choler, when we rave and bluster, and make as much noise and bustle as we can; but if the kindest and most generous affection comes across us, we suppress every sign of it, and hide ourselves in nooks and covert.