Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.

There is what is called the highway to posts and honor, and there is a cross and by way, which is much the shortest.

The regeneration of society is the regeneration of society by individual education.

Jesting is often only indigence of intellect.

A man must have very eminent qualities to hold his own without being polite.

We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.

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.