The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.

A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment.

Public charities and benevolent associations for the gratuitous relief of every species of distress, are peculiar to Christianity; no other system of civil or religious policy has originated them; they form its highest praise and characteristic feature.

Those who visit foreign nations, but who associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs 'caelum non animum mutant': they see new meridians, but the same men, and with heads as empty as their pockets.

Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give.

Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.

Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.