Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.

Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do.

Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.

He half retrieves a defeat who yields to it gracefully.