There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.

The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this-they throw it away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or discharge old debts.

Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.

Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.

One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.

Despair swallows up cowardice.

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.