The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.

For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.

There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!

Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.

Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.

To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.

The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.