No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.

Do not expect to be acknowledged for what you are, much less for what you would be; since no one can well measure a great man but upon the bier.

We talk on principal, but act on motivation.

A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand.

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.

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

A good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger's end.