Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.

No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.

Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.

No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind; despatch of a strong one.

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

Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.