It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse-the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.

Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.

We must not only obtain Wisdom: we must enjoy her.

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

There has never been a poet or orator who thought another better than himself.

In fact the whole passion ordinarily termed love (and heaven help me if I can think of any other term to apply to it) is of such exceeding triviality that I see nothing that I think comparable with it.

Promises are not to be kept, if the keeping of them is to prove harmful to those to whom you have made them.