When men comfort themselves with philosophy, 'tis not because they have got two or three sentences, but because they have digested those sentences, and made them their own: philosophy is nothing but discretion.
They that cry down moral honesty, cry down that which is a great part of my religion, my duty toward God, and my duty toward man. What care I to see a man run after a sermon, if he cozens and cheats as soon as he comes home. On the other side, morality must not be without religion; for if so, it may change, as I see convenience.
Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up dignity. In gluttony there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking; 'tis not the eating, and 'tis not the drinking that must be blamed, but the excess. So in pride.
They that are against superstition oftentimes run into it of the wrong side. If I wear all colors but black, then I am superstitious in not wearing black.
When a doubt is propounded, learn to distinguish, and show wherein a thing holds, and wherein it doth not hold. The not distinguishing where things should be distinguished, and the not confounding, where things should be confounded, is the cause of all the mistakes in the world.
First, in your sermons, use your logic, and then your rhetoric; Rhetoric without logic, is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with fine expressions when they understand not reason.
I have taken much pains to know everything that is esteemed worth knowing amongst men; but with all my reading, nothing now remains to comfort me at the close of this life but this passage of St. Paul: "It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." To this I cleave, and herein do I find rest.
The happiness of married life depends upon making small sacrifices with readiness and cheerfulness.