Vanity may be likened to the smooth-skinned and velvet-footed mouse, nibbling about forever in expectation of a crumb; while self-esteem is too apt to take the likeness of the huge butcher's dog, who carries off your steaks, and growls at you as be goes.

The fool is willing to pay for anything but wisdom. No man buys that of which he supposes himself to have an abundance already.

No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.

Ambition is frequently the only refuge which life has left to the denied or mortified affections. We chide at the grasping eye, the daring wing, the soul that seems to thirst for sovereignty only, and know not that the flight of this ambitious bird has been from a bosom or home that is filled with ashes.

There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it.

Tears are the natural penalties of pleasure. It is a law that we should pay for all that we enjoy.

It should console us for the fact that sin has not totally disappeared from the world, that the saints are not wholly deprived of employment.