The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.

I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.

We judge of others for the most part by their good opinion of themselves; yet nothing gives such offense or creates so many enemies, as that extreme self-complacency or superciliousness of manner, which appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance.

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.

No really great man ever thought himself so.

Sincerity has to do with the connexion between our words and thoughts, and not between our beliefs and actions.