Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.

Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.

Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.

Those who are pleased with the fewest things know the least, as those who are pleased with everything know nothing.

None but those who are happy in themselves can make others so.

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.

We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.