Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dulness in others.

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

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his service unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.