Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.

We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.

The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.

The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.

Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.

This is the test and triumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and what we may therefore very easily never have dreamt of, but to point out to us what is before our eyes and under our feet, though we have had no suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient strength of intuition, of determined grasp of mind to seize and retain it.

Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.