Vanity calculates but poorly on the vanity of others; what a virtue we should distil from frailty, what a world of pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs.

More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye.

Patience is the courage of the conqueror, the strength of man against destiny.

The food of hope is meditative action.

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.

The fewer blows, the better. Brave men fight if they must; wise men never fight if they can help it.

Nothing really immoral is ever permanently popular.