Motives are like harlequins--there is always a second dress beneath the first.

A little misery sweetens existence. It is the salt that makes it palatable and wholesome.

He who fears not, is to be feared.

The happiness of life, like the light of day, consists not in one brilliant flash, but in a series of mild, serene rays.

Retirement from business is a mistake in those who have not occupation to retire to, as well as from.

Criticism is too apt to sweep the blossoms from the tree, as well as the caterpillars.

The pillow is a silent sibyl--despise not its oracles.

Trust him with little who, without proofs, trusts you with everything.

Those who pursue the stream of Truth to its sources have much climbing to do, much fatigue to encounter, but they see great sights.

Poets are the chemists of sentiment, for they analyze and purify it.

Compare your griefs with other men's, and they will seem less.

Time's chariot-wheels make their ruts in the fairest face.

Art is but a mirror, which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfully only while unsullied.

Truth, though hewn like the mangled form of Osiris into a thousand pieces, and scattered to the four winds, shall be gathered limb to limb, and moulded with every joint and member into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.

Passion is like a ruin, which, in falling upon its victim, breaks itself to pieces.

Look down upon Genius and he will rise to a giant; attempt to crush him, and he will often soar to a god.

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.

To wish that others should learn by our experience, is sometimes as idle as to think that we can eat and they be filled; but when we find that we have eaten poison, it is doubtless mercy to warn others against the dish.

Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only reveal the poverty that necessitates the loan.

Reality teems with disappointment for him whose sources of enjoyment spring only in the Elysium of Fancy.

Wisdom is a palace, of which only the vestibule has yet been entered.

We ought to aim at such pleasures as follow labor, not at those which precede it.

Crime and punishment generally grow out of each other. Punishment is the bitter fruit that, unsuspected, ripens within the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

The pains of life serve, by contrast, to multiply enjoyment; they constitute the foil which sets off and heightens the flashing brightness of the gem.

The true meaning of the word "Equality" is--"No one better off than I am."

The minds of scholars are libraries; those of antiquaries, lumber-rooms; those of sportsmen, kennels; those of epicures, larders and cellars.

Rather let us suffer for speaking the truth, than that truth should suffer for want of speaking.

Fools are very often found united in the strictest intimacy, as the lighter kinds of wood can be the most closely glued together.

Life is a moment stolen from eternity.

Prosperity is a more refined and severer test of character than adversity, as one hour of summer sunshine produces greater corruption than the longest winter day.

Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked.

The nose of a mob is its imagination; by this, at any time, it can be easily led.

He that writes to himself, writes to an eternal public.

In the presence of a mother, we feel that our childhood has not all departed.

One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire.

The present is a bright speck between the darkness of the future and the twilight of the past.

Courtship before marriage is too often like a brilliant short preface before a dull, ill-written, lengthy book.

There never was a hypocrite so disguised, but he had yet some mark or other to be known by.

Those who understand the value of time use it as prudent people do their money--they make a little go a great way.

Little disputes before marriage are great ones after it; as northerly winds, which are warm in summer, blow keen and cold in winter.

Remorse is the poison of life, and repentence its cure.

When we mean to touch the heart, we always speak the truth in some degree. It is our last resource; and if it were our first, we should have less to lament.

Experience is a pocket-compass that few think of consulting until they have lost their way.

There is nothing so certain as that those who are the most alert in discovering the faults of a work of genius, are the least touched with its beauties.