To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.

He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.

True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.

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.

Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.

We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.