The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste.

Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.

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

One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.

Political truth is a libel-religious truth blasphemy.

To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.

In what we really understand, we reason but little.

The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.

The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.

The art of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of expectation.