A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much; yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirized can join in the satire.

In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.

Without humility, we keep all our defects; and they are only crusted over by pride, which conceals them from others, and often from ourselves.

Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.

We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.

A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less chargeable with ingratitude than his benefactor is.