Charity, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Next to putting it in a bank, men like to squander their superfluous wealth on those to whom it is sure to be doing the least possible good.

Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.

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.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end.

Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.

The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.