To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.

No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.

Revenge is fever in our own blood, to be cured only by letting the blood of another; but the remedy too often produces a relapse, which is remorse--a malady far more dreadful than the first disease, because it is incurable.

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.

When we live habitually with the wicked, we become necessarily either their victim or their disciple; when we associate, on the contrary, with virtuous men, we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or, at least, lose every day something of our faults.

In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another; is there any harm in letting it alone?

Time,- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.