It is surely one of the strangest of our propensities to mark out those we love best for the worst usage; yet we do, all of us. We can take any freedom with a friend; we stand on no ceremony with a friend.

What if two negatives make an affirmative ...does it follow that two nobodies shall be some body?

Social and political life is a Society for the Diffusion of Mendacity .

Everybody's word is worth Nobody's taking.

It is surely one of the strangest of our propensities to mark out those we love best for the worst usage; yet we do, all of us. We can take any freedom with a friend; we stand on no ceremony with a friend.

We feel bound to be punctual and conscientious with those we are indifferent about; while we can afford at any time, on the frostiest night, to be an hour after our appointment with the single gentleman who occupies an apartment in our heart's core.

It is an odd mode of diminishing one's own weakness to ask a friend to lend us the equal force of his.