The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.

The hunger for applause is the source for all conscious literature and heroism

We are almost always bored by just those whom we must not find boring.

That which makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is that which wounds our own.

Eloquence: saying the proper thing and stopping.

We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it; and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.

Most men, like plants, possess hidden qualities which chance discovers.