When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments; when to those of our own sect, we call them trials; when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things.

Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.

A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.

The fund of sensible discourse is limited; that of jest and badinerie is infinite.

Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.

A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.