He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.

Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.

In what we really understand, we reason but little.

Genius is native to the soil where it grows — is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun — and is not a hot - house plant or an exotic.

A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.