Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy.

Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.

Silence is one great art of conversation.

Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor can we triumph over them.

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

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

What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.