Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.

Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.

The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.

We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous; we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it.

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

True friendship is self-love at second-hand.

Love at first sight is only realizing an imagination that has always haunted us; or meeting with a face, a figure, or cast of expression in perfection that we have seen and admired in a less degree or in less favorable circumstances a hundred times before.