We can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home!

We must be doing something to be happy.

To die is only to be as we were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea.

The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.

Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.

To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.

Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.