It is not enough that your designs, nay that your actions, are intrinsically good, you must take care they shall appear so.

It is an error common to many to take the character of mankind from the worst and basest amongst them; whereas, as an excellent writer has observed, nothing should be esteemed as characteristical, of a species but what is to be found amongst the best and the most perfect individuals of that species.

Beauty may be the object of liking--great qualities of admiration--good ones of esteem--but love only is the object of love.

What is commonly called love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh.

To the generality of men you cannot give a stronger hint for them to impose upon you than by imposing upon yourself.

Nothing can be so quick and sudden as the operations of the mind, especially when hope, or fear, or jealousy, to which the other two are but journeymen, set it to work.

Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?