She is deceitful as the calm that precedes the hurricane, smooth as the water on the verge of the cataract, and beautiful as the rainbow, that smiling daughter of the storm; but, like the mirage in the desert, she tantalizes us with a delusion that distance creates, and that contiguity destroys.

Sensibility would be a good portress if she had but one hand; with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain.

Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

There are male as well as female gossips.

There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.

Posthumous fame is a plant of tardy growth, for our body must be the seed of it; or we may liken it to a torch, which nothing but the last spark of life can light up; or we may compare it to the trumpet of the archangel, for it is blown over the dead; but unlike that awful blast, it is of earth, not of heaven, and can neither rouse nor raise us.