Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed be anything else and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing

Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes in between them

I never read a book before reviewing it - it prejudices a man so

Praise is the best diet for us, after all

Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect

Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities

What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors

It is natural to every man to wish for distinction, and the praise of those who can confer honor by their praise, in spite of all false philosophy, is sweet to every human heart but as eminence can be but the lot of a few, patience of obscurity is a

Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food, but God has given us wit, and flavor, and brightness, and laughter to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marble