Some philosophers would give a sex to revenge, and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders; yet, because wounded vanity and slighted love are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart.

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

If there be a pleasure on earth which angels cannot enjoy, and which they might almost envy man the possession of, it is the power of relieving distress--if there be a pain which devils might pity man for enduring, it is the death-bed reflection that we have possessed the power of doing good, but that we have abused and perverted it to purposes of ill.

Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.

Charles Fox said that restorations were the most bloody of all revolutions; and he might have added that reformations are the best mode of preventing the necessity of either.

In politics, as in religion, it so happens, that we have less charity for those who believe the half of our creed, than for those that deny the whole of it; since if Servetus had been a Mohammedan, he would not have been burnt by Calvin.

By paying our other debts, we are equal with all mankind; but in refusing to pay a debt of revenge, we are superior.