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.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

There are many women who have never intrigued, and many men who have never gamed; but those who have done either but once are very extraordinary animals.

Nobility of birth does not always insure a corresponding unity of mind; if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions; but it sometimes acts as a clog rather than a spur.

They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.

It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.

Gaming is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality.