Revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude

Very great personages are not likely to form very just estimates either of others or of themselves; their knowledge of themselves is obscured by the flattery of others; their knowledge of others is equally clouded by circumstances peculiar to themselves. For in the presence of the great, the modest are sure to suffer from too much diffidence, and the confident from too much display.

To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.

Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.

The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.

He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.

It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross there is in our composition.