Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.

The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.

Keep carefully not of all scrapes and quarrels. They lower a character extremely; and are particularly dangerous in France, wherea man is dishonoured by not resenting an affront, and utterly ruined by resenting it.

You must embrace the man you hate, if you cannot be justified in knocking him down.

A man of the best parts and greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd, and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things; but they will be probably so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue.

The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic.

We are hardly ever grateful for a fine clock or watch when it goes right, and we pay attention to it only when it falters, for then we are caught by surprise. It ought to be the other way about.