“Jealousy is not love, but self-love.”

“Tis more dishonourable to distrust a friend than to be deceived by him.”

“Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily.”

“Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.”

“Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect than when they have been too perfectly crafted.”

“And do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.”

“The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.”

“Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.”

“Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.”

“It hurts not the tongue to give fair words.”

“In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.”

“I say, without characters, fame lives long.”

“Lord Bacon told Sir Edward Coke when he was boasting, The less you speak of your greatness, the more shall I think of it.”

“'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed, When not to be, receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed, Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.”

“Were I the Moor I would not be Iago. In following him I follow but myself; Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so for my peculiar end. For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In compliment extern, ’tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at. I am not what I am”

“Now these fellows in Washington wouldn't be so serious and particular if they only had to vote on what they thought was good for the majority of the people in the U.S. That would be a cinch. But what makes it hard for them is every time a bill comes up they have things to decide that have nothing to do with the merit of the bill. The principal thing is of course: What will this do for me personally back home?”

“It is awful hard to get people interested in corruption unless they can get some of it.”

“Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.”

“I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.”

“There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual.”