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

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!

Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds - habits and novelty.

A coxcomb is the blockhead's man of merit.

Piety with some people, but especially with women, is either a passion, or an infirmity of age, or a fashion which must be followed.

Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father.

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