One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.

Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.

A friend exaggerates a man's virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes.

The most skillful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener.

Cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon; cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.

One would wonder to hear skeptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the use of that faculty. Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation, or the continuance of his species. Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass. Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.

Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.