Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.

What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than begin talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies

I must say... that I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.