We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

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.

Reflection makes men cowards.

Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.

Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for.

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

Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.