The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number.

Those who have resources within themselves, who can dare to live alone, want friends the least, but, at the same time, best know how to prize them the most. But no company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm than what will do good.

The most notorious swindler has not assumed so many names as self-love, nor is so much ashamed of his own. She calls herself patriotism, when at the same time she is rejoicing at just as much calamity to her native country as will introduce herself into power, and expel her rivals.

Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it.

He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.

Pride requires very costly food-its keeper's happiness.