However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it.

We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves.

It is easier to rule others than to keep from being ruled oneself.

The cunningest dissimulation is when a man pretends to be caught in the traps others set for him; and a man is never so easily over-reached as when he is contriving to over-reach others.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

We are almost always wearied in the company of persons with whom we are not permitted to be weary.

Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.