Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

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

The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.

The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.

Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.

Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.

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