If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.

A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.

Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own sensations and derives pleasure from all around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, "in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face," which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them.

I have known persons without a friend--never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies.

Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.

Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.