It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.

I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke: but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones.

Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act.

There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.

The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.

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.

Whoever incites anger has a strong insurance against indifference.