We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.

Do not quarrel with the world too soon; for, bad as it may be, it is the best we have to live in, here. If railing would have made it better, it would have been reformed long ago.

Tyrants forego all respect for humanity in proportion as they are sunk beneath it. Taught to believe themselves of a different species, they really become so, lose their participation with their kind, and in mimicking the god dwindle into the brute.

The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another.

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

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.