The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about.

No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.

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.

A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.

If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.

A felon could plead "benefit of clergy" and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the "neck verse", which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.