Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
Reflection makes men cowards.
Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.
There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.
A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.
One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
A wise traveler never despises his own country.
Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.
Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
Learning is its own exceeding great reward.
People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
Good temper is one of the greatest preservers of the features.
