When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.

We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.

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 throwing out [of] malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain, which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.

Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it

The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.

Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves for a while from, the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be said only to fulfill our destiny in the place that gave us birth.