To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies.

The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood.

The proverb answers where the sermon fails.

The only true source of politeness is consideration.

The apothegm is the most portable form of Truth.... It is thus that the proverb answers where the sermon fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly expended in the air.

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