Avarice has ruined more men than prodigality, and the blindest thoughtlessness of expenditure has not destroyed so many fortunes as the calculating but insatiable lust of accumulation.

The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.

Man, if he compare himself with all that he can see, is at the zenith of power; but if he compare himself with all that he can conceive, he is at the nadir of weakness.

In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.

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