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.

Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.

It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.

Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.