The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.

Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.

It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.

I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it - between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot re-act upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power.

The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.

Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.

The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.