False praise is always confined to the great.

Whoever appears to have much cunning has in reality very little; being deficient in the essential article, which is, to hide cunning.

Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.

Great wants proceed from great wealth; but they are undutiful children, for they sink wealth down to poverty.

Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion.

Genius is allied to a warm and inflammable constitution; delicacy of taste, to calmness and sedateness. Hence it is common to find genius in one who is a prey to every passion.

To a zealot every one of his own sect is a saint, while the most upright of a different sect are to him children of perdition.