Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.
Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.
To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.
Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.
It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.
Comedy naturally wears itself out – destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.
No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.
A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.
Knowledge is pleasure as well as power.
Silence is one great art of conversation.
If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them as the dial does of those that are clouded.
Genius is a native to the soil where it grows – is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun; and is not a hothouse plant or an exotic.
They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.
It is a false principle that because we are entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the fair one.
To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.
Elegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.
A certain excess of animal spirits with thoughtless good-humor will often make more enemies than the most deliberate spite and ill-nature, which is on its guard, and strikes with caution and safety.
It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.
What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.