Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind; censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.

It should seem that indolence itself would incline a person to be honest, as it requires infinitely greater pains and contrivance to be a knave.

I hate a style, as I do a garden, that is wholly flat and regular; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.

A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.

I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.

Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.

We may daily discover crowds acquire sufficient wealth to buy gentility, but very few that possess the virtues which ennoble human nature, and (in the best sense of the word) constitute a gentleman.