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.

Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.

That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.

That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.

A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment.

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.