All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay and present praise.

True goodness is not without that germ of greatness that can bear with patience the mistakes of the ignorant.

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.

Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross there is in our composition.

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.