The most certain mode of making people content with us is to make them content with themselves.

Those can most easily dispense with society who are the most calculated to adorn it; they only are dependent on it who possess no mental resources, for though they bring nothing to the general mart, like beggars, they are too poor to stay at home.

People are always willing to follow advice when it accords with their own wishes.

Genius is the gold in the mine, talent is the miner who works and brings it out.

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.

Women excel more in literary judgment than in literary production,--they are better critics than authors.