That which anyone has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.

If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.

We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.

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.

Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.

Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.

There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.