A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.

The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.

Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.

I am proud up to the point of equality; everything above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.

The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.

The number of objects we see from living in a large city amuses the mind like a perpetual raree-show, without supplying it with any ideas.

It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.