Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.

There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.

He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.

How many may a man of diffusive conversation count among his acquaintances, whose lives have been signalized by numberless escapes; who never cross the river but in a storm, or take a journey into the country without more adventures than befel the knights-errant of ancient times in pathless forests or enchanted castles! How many must he know, to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to supply them with subjects of conversation?

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.