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

Some young people do not sufficiently understand the advantages of natural charms, and how much they would gain by trusting to them entirely. They weaken these gifts of heaven, so rare and fragile, by affected manners and an awkward imitation. Their tones and their gait are borrowed; they study their attitudes before the glass until they have lost all trace of natural manner, and, with all their pains, they please but little.

A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.

The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interest to promote yours.

This great misfortune, to be incapable of solitude.

Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius.

The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble; but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned.