There are some readers who have never read an essay on taste; and if they take my advice they never will, for they can no more improve their taste by so doing than they could improve their appetite or digestion by studying a cookery-book.
In the days of my youth I remembered my God! And He hath not forgotten my age.
As sure as God is good, so surely there is no such thing as necessary evil.
There is another world for all that live and move-a better one!
O Reader! hast thou eer stood to see The Holly-tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceies Its glossy leaes Ordered by an Intelligence so wise As might confound the Atheist’s sophistries.
It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.
One fault begets another; one crime renders another necessary.
The grave is but the threshold of eternity. What a world were this, how unendurable its weight, If they whom death hath sundered, did not meet again!
What will not woman, gentle woman dare; when strong affection stirs her spirit up?
For society, of all places I have ever been, Norwich is the best.
The march of intellect is proceeding at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a corresponding improvement in morals and religion, the faster it proceeds, with the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin.
Never let a man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul. The evil effect on himself is certain.
It has been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions; they have their place in heaven also.
Give me a room whose every nook is dedicated to a book.
Cupid “the little greatest god.”
What blockheads are those wise persons, who think it necessary that a child should comprehend everything it reads.
Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on.
Faith in the hereafter is as necessary for the intellectual as the moral character; and to the man of letters, as well as to the Christian, the present forms but the slightest portion of his existence.
If you would be pungent, be brief.
A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising three weeks.
To a resolute mind, wishing to do is the first step toward doing. But if we do not wish to do a thing it becomes impossible.