"Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life."

"To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue."

"To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead."

"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!"

"Zeal will do more than knowledge."

"There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man."

"The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature."

"To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living."

"Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love."

"To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous."

"Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that."

"Those who are fond of setting things to rights have no great objection to setting them wrong."

"We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts."

"The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come."

"The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor."

"I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them."

"When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest."

"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."

"Reason with most people means their own opinions."

"If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you."

"The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote."

"Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them."

"It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else."

"No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves."

"The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy."

"Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape."

"Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies."

"The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours."

"Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them."

"The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up."

"Those only deserve a monument who do not need one."

"There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice."

"The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation."

"You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world."

"He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies."

"Silence is one great art of conversation."

"Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul."

"A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage."

"Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own."

"We may be willing to tell a story twice never to hear it more than once."

"The public have neither shame or gratitude."

"The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much."

"We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have moldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty interest after interest attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living."

"Indolence is a delightful but distressing state. We must be doing something to be happy."

"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."

"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."

"Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts."

"A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles."

"We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness. We judge less favorably of their characters when any misfortune happens to them and a lucky hit either in business or reputation improves even their personal appearance in our eyes."

"The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends."