How seldom is generosity perfect and pure! How often do men give because it throws a certain inferiority on those who receive, and superiority on themselves!

How happy is it for us, that the admiration of others should depend so much more on their ignorance than our perfection!

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

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens.

Two men are equally free from the rage of ambition; are they therefore equal in merit? Perhaps not; one may be above ambition, the other below it.

Politics is the food of sense exposed to the hunger of folly.

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