Constant success shows us but side of the world. For, as it surrounds us with friends, who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or a bad memory; of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends until it break; or of a memory that recollects the pleasure of getting drunk, but forgets the pains of getting sober.

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

Habit will reconcile us to everything but change.

He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.

He that likes a hot dinner, a warm welcome, new ideas and old wine, will not often dine with the great.

How small a portion of our life is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that have gone past. In things that are present, even that is too often absorbed in vague determination to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

It is only when the rich are sick, that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.

Law and equity are two things which God hath joined, but which man hath put asunder.

Love may exist with out jealousy, although this is rare; but jealousy can exist without love, and this is common, for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter, no less than that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride, as often as by affection.

Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other: it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age!

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it, anything but live for it.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.

Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber, and takes out our brains to make room for it.

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

The sun should not set upon our anger; neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.