Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after.

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

Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to vary the prospect before them.

The corpse of friendship is not worth embalming.

It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.

[Science is] the desire to know causes.