If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.

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

The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.

There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.

Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.