"Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering the weaknesses of others."
"Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality."
"No really great man ever thought himself so."
"To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living."
"The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to [the artist Antonio]Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room.""
"If you think you can win, you can. Faith is necessary to victory."
"There is nothing more likely to drive a person mad than ... an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable."
"Prejudice is the child of ignorance."
"Rules and models destroy genius and art."
"First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not infrequently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or studied actions. A man's look is the work of years; it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily."
"Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it."
"There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you."
"We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts."
"The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture."
"The soul of dispatch is decision."
"The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion."
"Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part."
"Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry; it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary."
"As is our confidence, so is our capacity."
"It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world."
"The surest hindrance of success is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the judgment of the public. He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others."
"Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols - it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them."
"It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else."
"If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago."
"I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about."