The object of ambition, unlike that of love, never being wholly possessed, ambition is the more durable passion of the two.

As the excitement of the game increases, prudence is sure to diminish.

There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.

There is no man so great as not to have some littleness more predominant than all his greatness. Our virtues are the dupes, and often only the plaything of our follies.

My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.

How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel.

Alas! innocence is but a poor substitute for experience.