Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings.
A man’s reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.
Well I’ve had a happy life.
So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.
He who lives wisely to himself and his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.
Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.
The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation.
To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.
If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.
There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.
Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
Zeal will do more than knowledge.
There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.
If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.
Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it.
We are governed by sympathy; and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility.
Let a man’s talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.
To great evils we submit; yet we resent little provocations.
Malice often takes the garb of truth.