We are valued in this world at the rate we desire to be valued.

Life is a kind of sleep: old men sleep longest, nor begin to wake but when they are to die.

Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it.

I am told so many ill things of a man, and I see so few in him, that I begin to suspect he has a real but troublesome merit, as being likely to eclipse that of others.

False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.

Jesting is often only indigence of intellect.

Friendship * * * is a long time in forming, it is of slow growth, through many trials and months of familiarity.