They that have lived a single day have lived an age.

The nearer we come to great men the more clearly we see that they are only men. They rarely seem great to their valets.

Young people are dazzled by the brilliancy of antithesis, and employ it. Matter-of-fact men, and those who like precision, naturally fall into comparisons and metaphor. Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied even with hyperbole. As for the sublime, it is only great geniuses and those of the very highest order that are able to rise to its height.

We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.

Rarely do they appear great before their valets.

A man may have intelligence enough to excel in a particular thing and lecture on it, and yet not have sense enough to know he ought to be silent on some other subject of which he has but a slight knowledge; if such an illustrious man ventures beyond the bounds of his capacity, he loses his way and talks like a fool.

Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.