We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

He is a truly virtuous man who wishes always to be open to the observation of honest men.

Those who most obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want back seats.

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.

Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.

Only the contemptible fear contempt.

A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it.