The wonder is not that the world is so easily governed, but that so small a number of persons will suffice for the purpose. There are dead weights in political and legislative bodies as in clocks, and hundreds answer as pulleys who would never do for politicians.

The proverb answers where the sermon fails.

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

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.

It is a bird-flight of the soul, when the heart declares itself in song. The affections that clothe themselves with wings are passions that have been subdued to virtues.

Distinction is an eminence that is attained but too frequently at the expense of a fireside.

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