Pleasure Is By Much The

We Are Too Ready To Imagine That We Are Religious, Because We Know Something Of Religion. We Appropriate To Ourselves The Pious Sentiments We Read, And We Talk As If The Thoughts Of Other Men's Heads Were Really The Feelings Of Our Own Hearts. But Piety Has Not Its Seat In The Memory, But In The Affections, For Which However The Memory Is An Excellent Purveyor, Though A Bad Substitute.

After All That Corrupt Poets, And More Corrupt Philosophers, Have Told Us Of The Blandishments Of Pleasure, And Of Its Tendency To Soften The Temper And Humanize The Affections, It Is Certain, That Nothing Hardens The Heart Like Excessive And Unbounded Luxury; And He Who Refuses The Fewest Gratifications To His Own Voluptuousness, Will Generally Be Found The Least Susceptible Of Tenderness For The Wants Of Others.

A Corrupt Practice May Be Abolished, But A Soiled Imagination Is Not Easily Cleansed.

Our Merciful Father Has No Pleasure In The Sufferings Of His Children; He Chastens Them In Love; He Never Inflicts A Stroke He Could Safely Spare; He Inflicts It To Purify As Well As To Punish, To Caution As Well As To Cure, To Improve As Well As To Chastise.

There Is Scarcely Any Fault In Another Which Offends Us More Than Vanity, Though Perhaps There Is None That Really Injures Us So Little.