Falsehood is difficult to be maintained. When the materials of a building are solid blocks of stone, very rude architecture will suffice; but a structure of rotten materials needs the most careful adjustment to make it stand at all.

Of all hostile feelings, envy is perhaps the hardest to be subdued, because hardly any one owns it even to himself, but looks out for one pretext after another to justify his hostility.

When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamor and abuse by which he is assailed is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the public. And if he is a truly wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is to shine on.

He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.

A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables.

Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a great good to a less.