Popularity is neither fame nor greatness.

Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead, because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.

The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.

Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.

There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.