Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.

Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

The great charm of conversation consists less in the display of one's own wit and intelligence than in the power to draw forth the resources of others.

To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.

From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.

Foolish jokers are thick on the ground, and it rains insects of that sort everywhere. A good joker is a rarity; even a man who is such by nature finds it hard to sustain the part for long; it seldom happens that the man who makes us laugh wins our esteem.