Man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of the greater.

There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength.

Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.

We are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books for nothing.

A man is already of consequence in the world when it is known that we can implicitly rely upon him. Often I have known a man to be preferred in stations of honor and profit because he had this reputation: When he said he knew a thing, he knew it, and when he said he would do a thing, he did it.

We may observe in humorous authors that the faults they chiefly ridicule have often a likeness in themselves. Cervantes had much of the knight-errant in him; Sir George Etherege was unconsciously the Fopling Flutter of his own satire; Goldsmith was the same hero to chambermaids, and coward to ladies that he has immortalized in his charming comedy; and the antiquarian frivolities of Jonathan Oldbuck had their resemblance in Jonathan Oldbuck's creator.