The very essence of politeness seems to be to take care that by our words and actions we make other people pleased with us as well as with themselves.

We all covet wealth, but not its perils.

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

A wise man is not governed by others, nor does he try to govern them; he prefers that reason alone prevail.

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

No road is to long for him who advances slowly and does not hurry and no attainment is beyond his reach who equips himself with patience to achieve it

False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.