The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.

Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.

Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.

Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.

Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.