Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth.

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

A little praise is good for a shy temper; it teaches it to rely on the kindness of others.

If in argument we can make a man angry with us, we have drawn him from his vantage ground and overcome him.

An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. If you reject it you are unhappy, if you accept it you are undone.

It has been my fortune to love in general those men most who have thought most differently from me, on subjects wherein others pardon no discordance. I think I have no more right to be angry with a man, whose reason has followed up a process different from what mine has, and is satisfied with the result, than with one who has gone to Venice while I am at Siena, and who writes to me that he likes the place.

We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.