Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.

We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt.

The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.

As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.

Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves.

Man is by his constitution a religious animal.

An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.