The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

A distinction has been made between acuteness and subtlety of understanding. This might be illustrated by saying that acuteness consists in taking up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the air of truth.

No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.

The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.

If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.

A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery.