Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.

If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.

A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.

Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.

God is on the side of virtue; for whoever dreads punishment suffers it, and whoever deserves it, dreads it .

Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower; if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates and destroys.