Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.

Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulations of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.