No deceit is so veiled as that which lies concealed behind the semblance of courtesy.

The devil finds work for idle hands to do. Better to reign in the hell than serve in heaven. We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free.

Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.

There is no being of any race who, if he finds the proper guide, cannot attain to virtue.

For many wish not so much to be, as to seem to be, endowed with real virtue.

All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity.