A corrupt practice may be abolished, but a soiled imagination is not easily cleansed.

The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.

it is the modern nature of goodness to exert itself quietly, while a few characters of the opposite cast seem, by the rumor of their exploits, to fill the world; and by their noise to multiply their numbers.

We are too ready to imagine that we are religious, because we know something of religion. We appropriate to ourselves the pious sentiments we read, and we talk as if the thoughts of other men's heads were really the feelings of our own hearts. But piety has not its seat in the memory, but in the affections, for which however the memory is an excellent purveyor, though a bad substitute.

In men this blunder still you find; all think their little set mankind.

To hint at a fault does more mischief than speaking out; for whatever is left for the imagination to finish will not fail to be overdone.

He who has once taken to drink can seldom be said to be guilty of one sin only.