Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as rivers and mountains bond countries; or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and overgrown.

The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.

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.

Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.

Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.

I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.

Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been "hurt by the archers", nor has the iron entered their souls. The world has no hand on them.