There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.

True goodness is not without that germ of greatness that can bear with patience the mistakes of the ignorant.

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.

I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.

Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give.

Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set.

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.