No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.
Good temper is one of the greatest preservers of the features.
A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith’s bellows: they take breath but are not alive.
Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people’s weaknesses.
Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!
Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.
We often choose a friend as we do a mistress – for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
The most learned are often the most narrow minded.
The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.
The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.
The incentive to ambition is the love of power.
The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.