Mystery is not profoundness.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

Some men are very entertaining for a first interview, but after that they are exhausted, and run out; on a second meeting we shall find them flat and monotonous; like hand-organs, we have heard all their tunes.

He that is gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion, will not feel himself quite secure, until he has also drawn his teeth.

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.

Women who are the least bashful are not unfrequently the most modest; and we are never more deceived than when we would infer any laxity of principle from that freedom of demeanor which often arises from a total ignorance of vice.

A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.