Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.

As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them ... so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsafe and unsatisfactory.

True wit, to every man, is that which falls on another.

Ambition does not see the earth she treads on: The rock and the herbage are of one substance to her.

No truer word, save God's, was ever spoken, Than that the largest heart is soonest broken.

When the mind loses its feeling for elegance, it grows corrupt and groveling, and seeks in the crowd what ought to be found at home.

A great man knows the value of greatness; he dares not hazard it, he will not squander it.