The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty, it hits someone else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.

Better than fame is still the wish for fame, the constant training for a glorious strife.

In how large a proportion of creatures is existence composed of one ruling passion, the most agonizing of all sensations--fear.

The grave is, I suspect, the sole commonwealth which attains that dead flat of social equality that life in its every principle so heartily abhors.

Death is the only monastery; the tomb is the only cell, and the grave that adjoins the convent is the bitterest mock of its futility.

Honest men are the gentlemen of nature.

There is no policy like politeness; and a good manner is the best thing in the world either to get a good name, or to supply the want of it.