Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.

Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.

Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.

It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.

A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.