The nearer we approach great men, the clearer we see that they are men.

One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.

An egotist will always speak of himself, either in praise or in censure, but a modest man ever shuns making himself the subject of his conversation.

We seek our happiness outside ourselves, and in the opinion of men we know to be flatterers, insincere, unjust, full of envy, caprice and prejudice.

Too great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous.

A coxcomb is the blockhead's man of merit.

A well-born man is fortunate, but so is the man about whom people no longer ask, 'is he well-born?'