Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.

In order to try whether a vessel be leaky, we first prove it with water before we trust it with wine.

It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross there is in our composition.

Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.

I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.

No one knows where he who invented the plow was born, nor where he died; yet he has done more for humanity than the whole race of heroes who have drenched the earth with blood and whose deeds have been handed down with a precision proportionate only to the mischief they wrought.

Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking.