There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.

To reach the height of our ambition is like trying to reach the rainbow; as we advance it recedes.

It is by sympathy we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy may be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.

People must be taken as they are, and we should never try make them or ourselves better by quarreling with them.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.