If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.

The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.

One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.

We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.

The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.