There is no perfecter endowment in man than political virtue.

When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish.

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.

We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things.

It is the admirer of himself, and not the admirer of virtue, that thinks himself superior to others.

Lying is a most disgraceful vice; it first despises God, and then fears men.

As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish then to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture.