The duty of a judge is to administer justice, but his practice is to delay it

When we are dead we are praised by those who survive us, though we frequently have no other merit than that of being no longer alive.

As riches and honor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool, but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.

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.

A man is thirty years old before he has any settled thoughts of his fortune; it is not completed before fifty. He falls to building in his old age, and dies by the time his house is in a condition to be painted and glazed.

The most important things must be said simply, for they are spoiled by bombast; whereas trivial things must be described grandly, for they are supported only by aptness of expression, tone and manner.

We seek our happiness outside ourselves, and in the opinion of men we know to be flatterers, insincere, unjust, full of envy, caprice and prejudice.