It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men's opinions than to bring them over to ours.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!

A man unattached and without wife, if he have any genius at all, may raise himself above his original position, may mingle with the world of fashion, and hold himself on a level with the highest; this is less easy for him who is engaged; it seems as if marriage put the whole world in their proper rank.

A modest man never talks of himself.

Eminent station makes great men more great, and little ones less.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

Manners carry the world for the moment, character for all time.