The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.

Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.

The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.

Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.

Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.