If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.

The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.

It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.

We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.

Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.

Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come.

Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give.