Cruel men are the greatest lovers of Mercy, avaricious men of generosity, and proud men of humility; that is to say, in other, not in themselves.

Most importantly: Don't adjust your results to build up the ego of the chief strategist. Especially if the strategist is you.

Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others.

Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary.

As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.

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.

There are three kinds of power,--wealth, strength, and talent; but as old age always weakens, often destroys, the two latter, the aged are induced to cling with the greater avidity to the former.