Honor is the most capricious in her rewards. She feeds us with air, and often pulls down our house, to build our monument.

There is this paradox in pride - it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.

If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has.

It is with honesty in one particular as with wealth,--those that have the thing care less about the credit of it than those who have it not. No poor man can well afford to be thought so, and the less of honesty a finished rogue possesses the less he can afford to be supposed to want it.

Heroism, self-denial, and magnanimity, in all instances where they do not spring from a principle of religion, are but splendid altars on which we sacrifice one kind of self-love to another.

Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.