Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.

It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.

If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together,--a main plot and an under-plot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress.

Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.

Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them.

Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking.