As hardly anything can accidentally touch the soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest a child, without contributing in some degree, though the book itself be afterwards totally forgotten, to form the character.
Of all hostile feelings, envy is perhaps the hardest to be subdued, because hardly any one owns it even to himself, but looks out for one pretext after another to justify his hostility.
Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended.
A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
Some persons follow the dictates of their conscience only in the same sense in which a coachman may be said to follow the horses he is driving.
Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
As the telescope is not a substitute for, but an aid to, our sight, so revelation is not designed to supersede the use of reason, but to supply its deficiencies.
Of Rhetoric various definitions have been given by different writers; who, however, seem not so much to have disagreed in their conceptions of the nature of the same thing, as to have had different things in view while they employed the same term.
That is suitable to a man, in point of ornamental expense, not which he can afford to have, but which he can afford to lose.
Falsehood, like poison, will generally be rejected when administered alone; but when blended with wholesome ingredients may be swallowed unperceived.
It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.
As an exercise of the reasoning faculties, pure mathematics is an admirable exercise, because it consists of reasoning alone and does not encumber the student with any exercise of judgment.
An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads.
The depreciation of Christianity by indifference is a more insidious and less curable evil than infidelity itself.
Geologists complain that when they want specimens of the common rocks of a country, they receive curious spars; just so, historians give us the extraordinary events and omit just what we want, – the every-day life of each particular time and country.
It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor, – a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.
All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.
Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well-established authors.
The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.
Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected.