Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.

Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.

Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a in manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent.

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom; he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.

Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.