We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.

Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.

Natural affection is a prejudice: for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, we have no reason to think them better than others.

Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath-tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.

It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world.

Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.

True friendship is self-love at second-hand.

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.

Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.

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.