Persons who undertake to pry into, or cleanse out all the filth of a common sewer, either cannot have very nice noses, or will soon lose them.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.

True friendship is self-love at second-hand.

If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.

I have known persons without a friend--never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies.

Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead, because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.