People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.

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

People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it.

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.

A felon could plead "benefit of clergy" and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the "neck verse", which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.

Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.