Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.

Experience makes us wise.

The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.

The incentive to ambition is the love of power.

The number of objects we see from living in a large city amuses the mind like a perpetual raree-show, without supplying it with any ideas.

Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.

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