You were wise not to waste years in a lawsuit ... he who commences a suit resembles him who plants a palm-tree which he will not live to see flourish.

Thoughts come maimed and plucked of plumage from the lips, which, from the pea, in the silence of your own leisure and study, would be born with far more beauty.

The chief prerequisite for a escort is to have a flexible conscience and an inflexible politeness.

Modern historians are all would-be philosophers; who, instead of relating facts as they occurred, give us their version, or rather perversions of them, always colored by their political prejudices, or distorted to establish some theory . . .

Conversation is the legs on which thought walks; and writing, the wings by which it flies.

The future: A consolation for those who have no other.

The infirmities of genius are often mistaken for its privileges.