A man cannot paint portraits till he has seen faces.

The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.

Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.

Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.

It is one of the arts of a great beauty to heighten the effect of her charms by affecting to be sweetly unconscious of them.

Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words.

The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

They are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.

For every great evil, apparently irremediable, there is reserved, it is probable, somewhere in the design of Providence, an effectual remedy.

The reveries of the dreamer advance his hopes, but not their realization. One good hour of earnest work is worth them all.

Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

A great destiny needs a generous diet.... What can be expected of a people that live on macaroni!

At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of sword-play of the mind. You pink your adversary and he is forthwith dead: and then you deserve to be hung for it.

The selection of a subject is to the author what choice of position is to the general, -- once skilfully determined, the battle is already half won. Of a few writers it may be said that they are popular in despite of their subjects -- but of a great many more it may be observed that they are popular because of them.

A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter. True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull flowers of rhetoric.

By his provocations to good-natured merriment, a humorist of the first water contributes as much to the sum of happiness as the gravest philosopher.

Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion.

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.

Dreamers are half-way men of thought, and men of thought are half-way men of action.

Beauty has the more ardent, but worth the more discriminating lovers.