Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please.

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.

The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.

Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three.

Silence is the best security to the man who distrusts himself.

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.

Tricks and treachery are merely proofs of lack of skill.