The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate.

More is learned in a public than in a private school, from emulation. There is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one center.

This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.

Politeness is fictitious benevolence. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other.

A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife; every human being in such places is a spy.