The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.
What! Would you make no distinction between hypocrisy and devotion? Would you give them the same names, and respect the mask as you do the face? Would you equate artifice and sincerity? Confound appearance with truth? Regard the phantom as the very person? Value counterfeit as cash?
All is wholesome in the absence of excess.
Perfect reason avoids all extremes.
My heavens! I've been talking prose for the last forty years without knowing it.
The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.