Good Heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.

One should eat to live, not live to eat.

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?

There is no protection against slander.

Rest assured that there is nothing which wounds the heart of a noble man more deeply than the thought his honour is assailed.

Every good act is charity. A man's true wealth hereafter is the good that he does in this world to his fellows.

The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?