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.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes. He must often act from false reasons which are weak, because he dares not avow the true reasons which are strong.

An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude

Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it.

Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Time,- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.