To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.

Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.

There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.

Popularity is neither fame nor greatness.

Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.

No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.

Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.