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.

Greatness, as we daily see it, is unsociable.

Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition; never to be listened to, and to be listened to always.

O what a thing is age! Death without death's quiet.

I hate false words, and seek with care, difficulty, and moroseness, those that fit the thing.

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.

Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much.