Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

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.

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

It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.

There are many women who have never intrigued, and many men who have never gamed; but those who have done either but once are very extraordinary animals.

Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.

The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.