When you find out a man's ruling passion, beware of crossing him in it.

The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot.

We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.

To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.

A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.