There is scarce any passion so heartily decried by moralists and satirists, as AMBITION; and yet, methinks, ambition is not a vice but in a vicious mind: in a virtuous mind it is a virtue, and will be found to take its color from the character in which it is mixed. Ambition is a desire of superiority; and a man may become superior, either by making others less or himself greater.

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens.

It is in numberless instances happier to have a false opinion which we believe true, than a true one of which we doubt.

Love will sacrifice more to others than friendship, but then it exacts more from them.

No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself.

Men often prove the violence of their own prejudices, even by the violence with which they attack the prejudices of other people.

Every character is in some respects uniform, and in others inconsistent; and it is only by the study both of the uniformity and inconsistency, and a comparison of them with each other, that the knowledge of man is acquired.