It is much easier to modify an opinion if one has not already persuasively declared it.

Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.

Defeat should never be a source of discouragement, but rather a fresh stimulus.

If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.

Most of the appearance of mirth in the world is not mirth, it is art. The wounded spirit is not seen, but walks under a disguise.

Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost power, vigor, and activity of man's nature.

Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends.

Passion is the drunkenness of the mind.

Truth will lose its credit, if delivered by a person that has none.

Wonder is from surprise, and surprise stops with experience.

It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where people don't care to do anything, they shelter themselves under a permission that it cannot be done.

Defeat should never be a source of discouragement but rather a fresh stimulus.

Abstinence is the great strengthener and clearer of reason.

Anger is a transient hatred; or at least very like it.

The mind begins to boggle at unnatural substances as things paradoxical and incomprehensible.

God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress.

An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.

Folly enlarges men's desires while it lessens their capacities.

God afflicts with the mind of a father, and kills for no other purpose but that he may raise again.

Let a man be but in earnest in praying against a temptation as the tempter is in pressing it, and he needs not proceed by a surer measure.