Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.

Cunning differs from wisdom as twilight from open day.

When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was

A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.