Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.

It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.

To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.

To build is to be robbed.

There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur; so many immediate evils are