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.

There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.

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

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

In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.

Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means.

The coquette has companions, indeed, but no lovers,--for love is respectful and timorous; and where among her followers will she find a husband?