If nature did not take delight in blood, She would have made more easy ways to good.

Two men are equally free from the rage of ambition; are they therefore equal in merit? Perhaps not; one may be above ambition, the other below it.

There are sometimes beauties in a character which would never have appeared but for a defect, and defects which would never have appeared but for a beauty.

It has been said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they are more lasting than those of the body; but I do not remember to have heard it said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they make those of the body more lasting.

Politics is the food of sense exposed to the hunger of folly.

Pleasure is the business of the young, business the pleasure of the old.

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