The science of mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs.

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.

Women that are the least bashful are often the most modest.

If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade.

You cannot separate charity and religion.

Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.

He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.