It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.

He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.

The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others; or, the art of pleasing is to seem pleased.

If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.

Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.