Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings.

To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.

Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as rivers and mountains bond countries; or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and overgrown.

The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.