Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at...

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.

There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.

The world is not yet exhaused; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a distinction produces rivalry.

Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,<br /> Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.