To great evils we submit, we resent little provocations.

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.

Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.

Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.

We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.

You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.

The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.