A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.

The public have neither shame or gratitude.

The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.

A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.

We judge of others for the most part by their good opinion of themselves; yet nothing gives such offense or creates so many enemies, as that extreme self-complacency or superciliousness of manner, which appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance.

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.