Our companions please us less from the charms we find in their conversation than from those they find in ours.

I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others.

A very small offence may be a just cause for great resentment: it is often much less the particular instance which is obnoxious to us than the proof it carries with it of the general tenor and disposition of the mind from whence it sprung.

We should do by our cunning as we do by our courage--always have it ready to defend ourselves, never to offend others.

Surely no man can reflect, without wonder upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life.

Men and statues that are admired ire an elevated situation have a very different effect upon us when we approach them; the first appear less than we imagined them, the last bigger.

The world is an excellent judge in general, but a very bad one in particular.