Those who can command themselves command others.

We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.

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.

Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

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.

First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.