In the library of the world men have hitherto been ranged according to the form, and the binding; the time is coming when they will take rank and order according to their contents and intrinsic merits.
There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.
Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
Someone has said that to plagiarise from the ancients is to play the pirate beyond the Equator, but that to steal from the moderns is to pick pockets at street corners.
Tis easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate.
Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.
Change, change, – we all covet change.
Women see faults much more readily in each other than they can discover perfections.
Anticipation leads the way to victory, and is the spur to conquest.
Knowledge is boundless, – human capacity, limited.
Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence.
Love is like epidemic diseases. The more one fears it the more likely one is to contract it.
Though we best know and cannot deny our imperfections, it is not for us to lose our self-reliance and true manhood.
The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.
Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. We do not go to market with ingots, but with silver and small change.
We take our colors, chameleon-like, from each other.
Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours; it is a palliation; death is the remedy.
Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.
Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.