The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our conversation.

We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.

What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

There is something to be said for jealousy, because it only designs the preservation of some good which we either have or think wehave a right to. But envy is a raging madness that cannot bear the wealth or fortune of others.

Moderation is an ostentatious proof of our strength of character.