Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

It seems to be remarkable that death increases our veneration for the good, and extenuates our hatred for the bad.

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.

Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities, superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world; and, whatever apparent disadvantages he may suffer in the comparison with others, he has some invisible distinctions, some latent reserve of excellence, which he throws into the balance, and by which he generally fancies that it is turned in his favour.