Nothing is difficult, when gain and honour unite their influence.

The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.

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

To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

Friendship is not always the sequel of obligation.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.