Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age.

So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less.

There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

Every dog must have his day.