We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.

The deafest man can hear praise, and is slow to think any an excess.

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

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.

The sublime is contained in a grain of dust.

Modesty and diffidence make a man unfit for public affairs; they also make him unfit for brothels.

The most pernicious of absurdities is that weak, blind, stupid faith is better than the constant practice of every human virtue.