Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.

The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.

What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.

We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.