Some men who know that they are great are so very haughty withal and insufferable that their acquaintance discover their greatness only by the tax of humility which they are obliged to pay as the price of their friendship.

God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude.

It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.

Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears.

Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash--for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present.

As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.

Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pygmy.