There are only two things in which the false professors of all religions have agreed--to persecute all other sects and to plunder their own.

Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.

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

It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us than the powerful whom we have injured.

Wealth is a relative thing since those who have little and want less are richer than those who have much but want more.

Villains are usually the worst casuists, and rush into crimes to avoid less. Henry VIII. committed murder to avoid the imputation of adultery; and in our times, those who commit the latter crime attempt to wash off the stain of seducing the wife by signifying their readiness to shoot the husband.

The plainest man that can convince a woman that he is really in love with her has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce no such conviction. For the love of woman is a shoot, not a seed, and flourishes most vigorously only when ingrafted on that love which is rooted in the breast of another.