A statesman, we are told, should follow public opinion. Doubtless, as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins and guiding them..

Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively w….

A mother should give her children a superabundance of enthusiasm; that after they have lost all they are sure to lose on mixing with the world, enoug….

It is with flowers as with moral qualities; the bright are sometimes poisonous; but, I believe, never the sweet..

To Adam Paradise was home. To the good among his descendants home is paradise..

The power of faith will often shine forth the most when the character is naturally weak..

Only when the voice of duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action..

Man without religion is the creature of circumstances: Religion is above all circumstances, and will lift him up above them..

Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others..

What hypocrites we seem to be whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud..

Nothing good bursts forth all at once. The lightning may dart out of a black cloud; but the day sends his bright heralds before him, to prepare the w….

The question is not whether a doctrine is beautiful but whether it is true. When we wish to go to a place, we do not ask whether the road leads throu….

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept of the stretch..

Better far off to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches unseen and to see well the rest; to see them not once, but again and often aga….

Examples would indeed be excellent things were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow them..

It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower and harder than loss in all things good; but in all things bad getting is quicker and ….

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel..

Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others. A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in h….

Truth, when witty, is the wittiest of all things..

The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it..

Every Irishman, the saying goes, has a potato in his head..