There is a strong feeling in favour of cowardly and prudential proverbs.
The very flexibility and ease which make men’s friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget.
The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances.
The time would fail me if I were to recite all the big names in history whose exploits are perfectly irrational and even shocking to the business mind.
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
The cruellest lies are often told in silence.
The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.
Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind.
So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts.
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; the best that is in us is better than we can understand; for it is grounded beyond experience, and guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on to another.
Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide, but to be good.