We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.

No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.

Sometimes the greatest adversities turn out to be the greatest blessings.

Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.

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.

Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good.

Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.