A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
There are charms made only for distant admiration.
Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.
There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.
Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.