We frequently do good in order to enable us to do evil later with impunity exemption of punishment.

The man whom no one pleases is much more unhappy than the man who pleases no one.

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.

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.

The confidence which we have in ourselves give birth to much of that, which we have in others.

There are some people upon whom their very faults and failings sit gracefully; and there are others whose very excellencies and accomplishments do not become them.

There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.