We had as lief not be as not be ourselves.
We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
Silence is one great art of conversation.
The path of genius is free, and its own
Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.
Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.
The truly proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion and does not seek to make converts to it.
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been.
We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have moldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty interest after interest attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while...
To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence a vain man, in order that it may.
The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.
Those who are fond of setting things to rights have no great objection to setting them wrong.
We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves.
The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: The one thinks everything right that is French the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.
The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way: an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.