Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.

I know not why any one but a school boy in his declamation would whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they were rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves and of one another.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it.

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his service unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.