The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say.

Some people are like popular songs that you only sing for a short time.

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.

The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object.

Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.