Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.

No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.

It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.

How many may a man of diffusive conversation count among his acquaintances, whose lives have been signalized by numberless escapes; who never cross the river but in a storm, or take a journey into the country without more adventures than befel the knights-errant of ancient times in pathless forests or enchanted castles! How many must he know, to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to supply them with subjects of conversation?

We must consider how very little history there is--I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture.

A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.

Where there is emulation, there will be vanity; where there is vanity, there will be folly.