There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances.

It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one.

There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy.

The most virtuous women have within them something that is never chaste.

Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us to squint when we are placed in a false position.

Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.

A deist is an atheist with an eye cocked for the off-chance of some advantage.