We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.

Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom.

A man, in order to establish himself in the world, does everything he can to appear established there.

On why I don't trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition - which despises small interests to gain great ones.

No accidents are so unlucky [bad] but that the wise may draw some advantage [good] from them.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

Our own distrust gives a fair pretence for the knavery of other people.