If we require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honor.

Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world.

No wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance, if he is to shut himself up for a year to study science, it is better to look out to the fields, than to an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there is nobody to keep him from walking in again: but if a man walks out in London, he is not sure when he will walk in again. A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life.

Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.

He that is much flattered soon learns to flatter himself.