The cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature the oldest.

But never yet the dog our country fed, Betrayed the kindness or forgot the bread.

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.

A man's ancestry is a positive property to him.

A pipe is the fountain of contemplation, the source of pleasure, the companion of the wise; and the man who smokes, thinks like a philosopher and acts like a Samaritan.

The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.