We uniformly applaud what is right and condemn what is wrong, when it costs us nothing but the sentiment.

A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.

Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.

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.