I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object.

There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.

As we are poetical in our natures, so we delight in fable.

The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room."

When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.

Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal.