Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own.

Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.

The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

The public pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.