One great reason why men practice generosity so little in the world, is, their finding so little there: generosity is catching; and if so many men escape it, it is in a great degree from the same reason that country-men escape the smallpox, because they meet no one to give it to them.

It is so much in the nature of men to overreach and deceive one another, that their very sports and plays are founded on that principle.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?

It would be doing cunning too much honor to call it an inferior species of true discernment.

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.

How seldom is generosity perfect and pure! How often do men give because it throws a certain inferiority on those who receive, and superiority on themselves!

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