I cannot believe that any man who deserved fame ever labored for it; that is, directly. For, as fame is but the contingent of excellence, it would be….

If an Artist love his Art for its own sake, he will delight in excellence wherever he meets it, as well in the work of another as in his own..

Distinction is the consequence, never the object of a great mind..

No man knows himself as an original..

The most common disguise of Envy is in praise of what is subordinate..

If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the….

The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor..

He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down..

Nothing gets you behind faster than trying to keep up with people who are already there..

Reputation is but a synonym of popularity: dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters..

Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie; for lies breed like Surinam toads; you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred young ones on its back..

It is my greatest misfortune to be too lazy, and by the few mortifications I have already set with on that account I predict many evils in my future ….

An original mind is rarely understood, until it has been reflected from some half-dozen congenial with it, so averse are men to admitting the true in….

In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others..

Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise; it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but n….

Injustice allowed at home is not likely to be corrected abroad..

Make no man your idol, for the best man must have faults; and his faults will insensibly become yours, in addition to your own..

I am inclined to think from my own experience that the difficulty to eminence lies not in the road, but in the timidity of the traveler..

Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other..

I have no ambition to shine beyond my abilities..

The greatest of all fools is the proud fool--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets..