Sin, every day, takes out a patent for some new invention' - Edwin Percy Whipple

Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.

In the life of the individual, as in the more comprehensive life of the state, pretension is nothing and power is everything.

The eye observes only what the mind, the heart, and the imagination are gifted to see; and sight must be reinforced by insight before souls can be discerned as well as manners, ideas as well as objects, realities and relations as well as appearances and accidental connections.