I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them.

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

Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.

The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.

It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.

Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before ithas had time to reconcile its feelings to the change in circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere sur prise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances.