The same vices which are huge and insupportable in others we do not feel in ourselves.

We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.

Avoid making yourself the subject of conversation.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!

When we have run through all forms of government, without partiality to that we were born under, we are at a loss with which to side; they are all a compound of good and evil. It is therefore most reasonable and safe to value that of our own country above all others, and to submit to it.

He who has lived a day has lived an age.

We seldom repent talking little, but very often talking too much.