We are told, that the black bear is innocent; but I should not like to trust myself with him.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

...a common observation, that few are mended by imprisonment, and that he, whose crimes have made confinement necessary, seldom makes any other use of his enlargement, than to do, with greater cunning, what he did before with less.

Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.

If, sir, men were all virtuous, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither wall, nor mountains, nor seas could afford any security.

The uncertainty of death is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life.

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.