The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not understand.

Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.

Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.

Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.

The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.

Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.