 A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes. |
| Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity. |
| It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. |
| Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue. |
| I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs. |
| To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny. |
| I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: "What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me." |
| It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others. |
| One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter. |
| A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes. |
| The woman that deliberates is lost. |
| Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below. |
| If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it. |
| Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed. |
| There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty. |
| A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side. |
| Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another. |
| Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness. |
| To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction. |
| We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us. |
