They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.

Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.