In short, virtue cannot live where envy reigns, nor liberality subsist with niggardliness.

There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously removes or at least alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.

To be good to the vile is to throw water into the sea.

By God and upon my conscience, said the devil, I never observed it, for my mind is occupied with so many different things that I was forgetting the main thing I came about. This demon must be an honest fellow and a good Christian, said Sancho; for if he wasn't he wouldn't swear by God and his conscience; I feel sure now there must be good souls even in hell itself.

A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty.

The beauty of some women has days and seasons, depending upon accidents which diminish or increase it; nay, the very passions of the mind naturally improve or impair it, and very often utterly destroy it.

Give the devil his due.