There is a wide difference between general acquaintance and companionship. You may salute a man and exchange compliments with him daily, yet know nothing of his character, his inmost tastes arid feelings.

One well-cultivated talent, deepened and enlarged, is worth one hundred shallow faculties.

As frost, raised to its utmost intensity, produces the sensation of fire, so any good quality, overwrought and pushed to excess, turns into its own contrary.

What lasting progress was ever made in social reformation, except when every step was insured by appeals to the understanding and the will?

Intercourse is after all man's best teacher. "Know thyself" is an excellent maxim; but even self-knowledge cannot be perfected in closets and cloisters--nor amid lake scenery, and on the sunny side of the mountains. Men who seldom mix with their fellow-creatures are almost sure to be one-sided--the victims of fixed ideas, that sometimes lead to insanity.

Talking, is a digestive process which is absolutely essential to the mental constitution of the man who devours many books.

The countenance may be rightly defined as the title page which heralds the contents of the human volume, but like other title pages, it sometimes puzzles, often misleads, and often says nothing to the purpose.