You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are decidedly bad.

When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge; love simple ones as you would the native roses on your cheek.

He, who cannot forgive a trespass of malice to his enemy, has never yet tasted the most sublime enjoyment of love.

Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?

Neatness begets order; but from order to taste there is the same difference as from taste to genius, or from love to friendship.

Avoid connecting yourself with characters whose good and bad sides are unmixed and have not fermented together; they resemble vials of vinegar and oil; or palletts set with colors; they are either excellent at home and insufferable abroad, or intolerable within doors and excellent in public; they are unfit for friendship, merely because their stamina, their ingredients of character are too single, too much apart; let them be finely ground up with each other, and they are incomparable.

Evasions are the common shelter of the hard-hearted, the false, and impotent, when called upon to assist; the real great alone plan instantaneous help, even when their looks or words presage difficulties.