Secrecy is best taught by starting with ourselves.

To enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others; this is true morality.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is.

Be my brother or I will kill you.

It's a question of prudence. Nobody has a high opinion of fishwives but who would dare offend them while walking through the fish market.

It is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is most fertile.