Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.

Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.

They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.

The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.

The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.

When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.

Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense?