Sometimes there are accidents in our lives the skillful extrication from which demands a little folly.

The same strength of character which helps a man resist love, helps to make it more violent and lasting too. People of unsettled minds are always driven about with passions, but never absolutely filled with any.

Some good qualities are like the senses: Those who are entirely deprived of them can have no notion of them.

One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him.

We often make use of envenomed praise, that reveals on the rebound, as it were, defects in those praised which we dare not exposeany other way.

Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.