He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised.

I do not wonder that, where the monastick life is permitted, every order finds votaries, and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.

To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise.

All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.

Gratitude is a species of justice.