Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it.

A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.

The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate in which they undergo.

The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.