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.

The spendthrift robs his heirs the miser robs himself.

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.

Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses.

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.

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

Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world.