A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.

Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

The lines of poetry, the period of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.

I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.