The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.

Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead, because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.

There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.

The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves.

It is better to drink of deep grief than to taste shallow pleasures.

Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor can we triumph over them.