Absurdities are great or small in proportion to custom or insuetude.

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.

Contentment is better than divinations or visions.

Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy and mastery.

God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours. A hundred lights in every temple burn, And at each shrine I bend my knee in turn.

We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.

O Music! how it grieves me that imprudence, intemperance, gluttony, should open their channels into thy sacred stream.