We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.

A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.

So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.

It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.

The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference; it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas.

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

Natural affection is a prejudice; for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, we have no reason to think them better than others.