When you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned.

It is hard to say which is the greatest fool: he who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.

I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments.

Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men; their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.

Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.

I would have all intoleration intolerated in its turn.

Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes.