To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.
Who are those ever multiplying authors that with unparalleled fecundity are overstocking the world with their quick succeeding progeny? They are novel-writers.
Pleasure is by much the most laborious trade I know, especially for those who have not a vocation to it.
Commending a right thing is a cheap substitute for doing it, with which we are too apt to satisfy ourselves.
We do not so much want books for good people, as books which will make bad ones better.
My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. They learn, on week-days, such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.
Love never reasons, but profusely gives, Gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all, And trembles then, lest it has done too little.
There is one single fact that one may oppose to all the wit and argument of infidelity; namely, that no man ever repented of being a Christian on his death-bed.
If a young lady has that discretion and modesty without which all knowledge is little worth, she will never make an ostentatious parade of it, because she will rather be intent on acquiring more than on displaying what she has.
A slowness to applaud betrays a cold temper or an envious spirit.
Names govern the world.
No adulation; 'tis the death of virtue; Who flatters, is of all mankind the lowest Save he who courts the flattery.
Imagination frames events unknown, In wild, fantastic shapes of hideous ruin, And what it fears creates.
Strange! that what is enjoyed without pleasure cannot be discontinued without pain!
The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.
The keen spirit Seizes the prompt occasion, makes the thought Start into instant action, and at once Plans and performs, resolves and executes!
the modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.
My retirement was now become solitude; the former is, I believe, the best state for the mind of man, the latter almost the worst. In complete solitude, the eye wants objects, the heart wants attachments, the understanding wants reciprocation. The character loses its tenderness when it has nothing to strengthen it, its sweetness when it has nothing to soothe it.
when these incorrigible talkers are compelled to be quiet, is it not evident that they are not silent because they are listening to what is said, but because they are thinking of what they themselves shall say when they can seize the first lucky interval, for which they are so narrowly watching?
parents are too apt to mistake inclination for genius.
It is the large aggregate of small things perpetually occurring that robs me of all my time. The expense of learning to read might have been spared in my education, for I never read.
Anger is a violent act, envy a constant habit - no one can be always angry, but he may be always envious.
Our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own; nor His infinite perfections as much as our smallest wants.
Among the many evils which prevail under the sun, the abuse of words is not the least considerable. By the influence of time, and the perversion of fashion, the plainest and most unequivocal may be so altered, as to have a meaning assigned them almost diametrically opposite to their original signification.
Outward attacks and troubles rather fix than unsettle the Christian, as tempests from without only serve to root the oak faster; while an inward canker will gradually rot and decay it.
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