The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his disgrace.
Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for - they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?
Life is the art of being well deceived.
What I mean by living to one's self is living in the world, as in it, not of it.
We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.