The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

No cause more frequently produces bashfulness than too high an opinion of our own importance. He that imagines an assembly filled with his merit, panting with expectation, and hushed with attention, easily terrifies himself with the dread of disappointing them, and strains his imagination in pursuit of something that may vindicate the veracity of fame, and show that his reputation was not gained by chance.

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

It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.

It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.

The uncertainty of death is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life.

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