The pride of ancestry is a superstructure of the most imposing height, but resting on the most flimsy foundation. It is ridiculous enough to observe the hauteur with which the old nobility look down on the new. The reason of this puzzled me a little, until I began to reflect that most titles are respectable only because they are old; if new, they would be despised, because all those who now admire the grandeur of the stream would see nothing but the impurity of the source.

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.

No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.

Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.