Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun.

Gaming has been resorted to by the affluent as a refuge from ennui. It is a mental dram, and may succeed for a moment; but, like all other stimuli, it produces indirect debility.

Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried.

Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.

The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world.

The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.

He that openly tells, his friends all that he thinks of them, must expect that they will secretly tell his enemies much that they do not think of him.