Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense?

A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.

We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.

Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable.

Without life there can be no action — no objects of pursuit — no restless desires — no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it — that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope.

We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.