Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.

It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions,--a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen.

We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.

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

There is no accident so unfortunate but wise men will make some advantage of it, nor any so entirely fortunate but fools may turn it to their own prejudice.

Nothing is more contagious than example, and no man does any exceeding good or exceeding ill but it spawns new deeds of the same kind. The good we imitate through emulation, the ill through the malignity of our nature, which shame keeps locked up, but example sets free.