Disappointment and feebleness imprint upon us a cowardly and valetudinarian virtue.

Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.

The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.

Books are a languid pleasure.

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.

Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God.