Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.

Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.

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

[Science is] the desire to know causes.

The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.

The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate; he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.