There is scarce any passion so heartily decried by moralists and satirists, as AMBITION; and yet, methinks, ambition is not a vice but in a vicious mind: in a virtuous mind it is a virtue, and will be found to take its color from the character in which it is mixed. Ambition is a desire of superiority; and a man may become superior, either by making others less or himself greater.

No man ever reaches manhood till a woman's tenderness Is a part of his possession.

It by no means follows, that because two men utter the same words, they have precisely the same idea which they mean to express: language is inadequate to the variety of ideas which are conceived by different minds, and which, could they be expressed, would produce a new variety of characteristic differences between man and man.

It is in numberless instances happier to have a false opinion which we believe true, than a true one of which we doubt.

There are sometimes beauties in a character which would never have appeared but for a defect, and defects which would never have appeared but for a beauty.

If the human mind naturally produces noisome weeds, it also produces flowers and fruit; and ... the best method to mend the soil in general, is for each of us to cultivate his own particular spot.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?