Few persons have courage enough to appear as good as they really are.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept of the stretch.

What hypocrites we seem to be whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud.

It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower and harder than loss in all things good; but in all things bad getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of.

Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.

It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life.

Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little.