Sensibility would be a good portress if she had but one hand; with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain.

A wise man may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of his deceiver; the wise man is silent, and denies that triumph to an enemy which he would hardly concede to a friend; a triumph that proclaims his own defeat.

She is deceitful as the calm that precedes the hurricane, smooth as the water on the verge of the cataract, and beautiful as the rainbow, that smiling daughter of the storm; but, like the mirage in the desert, she tantalizes us with a delusion that distance creates, and that contiguity destroys.

It was observed of Elizabeth that she was weak herself, but chose wise counsellors; to which it was replied, that to choose wise counsellors was, in a prince, the highest wisdom.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.

In all countries where nature does the most, man does the least.