Human ability is an unequal match for the violent and unforeseen vicissitudes of the world.

True gentleness is founded on a sense of what we owe to him who made us and to the common nature which we all share. It arises from reflection on our own failings and wants, and from just views of the condition and duty of man. It is native feeling heightened and improved by principle.

We ought never to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty.

Fretfulness of temper will generally characterize those who are negligent of order.

The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior it is social, kind, cheerful far removed from the cloudy and illiberal disposition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit.

In the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions.

Nothing, except what flows from the heart, can render even external manners truly pleasing.

Exercise is the chief source of improvement in our faculties.

Those who are learning to compose and arrange their sentences with accuracy and order are learning, at the same time, to think with accuracy and order.

To exult over the miseries of an unhappy creature is inhuman.

What ever purifies the heart also fortifies it.

As the primary end of History is to record truth, impartiality, fidelity and accuracy are the fundamental qualities of an Historian.

Nothing leads more directly to the breach of charity, and to the injury and molestation of our fellow-creatures, than the indulgence of an ill temper.