Cruelty in all countries is the companion of anger; but there is only one, and never was another on the globe, where she coquets both with anger and mirth.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude, their decay.

Virtue is presupposed in friendship.

When a cat flatters ... he is not insincere: you may safely take it for real kindness.

Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.

Life and death appear more certainly ours than whatsoever else; and yet hardly can that be called ours, which comes without our knowledge, and goes without it.