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

A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.

No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.

We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.

He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.