To great evils we submit, we resent little provocations.

To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.

Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.

Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.

Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.