Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.

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!

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.

Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect.

The public have neither shame or gratitude.

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.

I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object.