Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?

The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity.

The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered.

I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.

The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.