No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

He who lives wisely to himself and his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.

Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.

The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.

Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.

The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.