Those who are well assured of their own standing are least apt to trespass on that of others, whereas nothing is so offensive as the aspirings of vulgarity which thinks to elevate itself by humiliating its neighbor.

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.

When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.

When the Gauls laid waste Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes, and seated in stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered death without resistance or supplication. Such conduct was in them applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indians it was reviled as both obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the dupes of show and circumstances! How different is virtue, clothed in purple and enthroned in state, from virtue, naked and destitute, and perishing obscurely in a wilderness.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced.

The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.

The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages.