Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.

Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.

Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices thatmay accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.

In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak and speak with dignity too.

There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.

A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.

Every man is to be had one way or another and every woman almost anyway.