Our wealth is often a snare to ourselves, and always a temptation to others.

Some men of a secluded and studious life, have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts, and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon, that far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that world of waters.

To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.

The advocate for torture, would wish to see the strongest hand joined to the basest heart, and the weakest head. Engendered in intellectual, and carried on in artificial darkness, torture is a trial, not of guilt, but of nerve, not of innocence, but of endurance; it perverts the whole order of things, for it compels the weak, to affirm that which is false, and determines the strong, to deny that which is true; it converts the criminal into the evidence, the judge into the executioner, and makes a direr punishment than would follow guilt, precede it.

Envy ought in strict truth to have no place whatever allowed it in the heart of man; for the goods of this present world, are so vile and low, that they are beneath it; and those of the future world, are so vast and exalted, that they are above it.

It is an easy and a vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them, is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.

Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.

War is a game, in which princes seldom win, the people never. To be defended, is almost as great an evil as to be attacked; and the peasant has often found the shield of a protector, no less oppressive than the sword of an invader. Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts; being appeals from right to might, and from argument to artillery; the fomenters of them have considered the raw materials, man, to have been formed for no worthier purposes than to fill up gazettes at home with their names, and ditches abroad with their bodies. Let us hope that true philosophy, the joint offspring of a religion that is pure, and of a reason that is enlightened, will gradually prepare a better order of things, when mankind will no longer be insulted, by seeing bad pens mended by good swords, and weak heads exalted by strong hands.

Modern criticism discloses that which it would fain conceal, but conceals that which it professes to disclose; it is therefore, read by the discerning, not to discover the merits of an author, but the motives of his critic.

If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has; they serve him better than any others, and receive no wages.

There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head, or a very short creed.

If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.

Matrimony is an engagement which must last the life of one of the parties, and there is no retracting ... therefore, to avoid all the horror of a repentance that comes too late, men should thoroughly know the real causes that induce them to take so important a step, before they venture upon it; do they stand in need of a wife, an heiress, or a nurse; is it their passions, their wants, or their infirmities, that solicit them to wed?

For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.

It has been observed that a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant will see farther than the giant himself; and the moderns, standing as they do on the vantage ground of former discoveries and uniting all the fruits of the experience of their forefathers, with their own actual observation, may be admitted to enjoy a more enlarged and comprehensive view of things than the ancients themselves.

It is best, if possible, to deceive no one; for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself.

Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash; for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashions to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.

It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others, think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.

Love is an alliance of friendship and of lust; if the former predominate, it is a passion exalted and refined, but if the latter, gross and sensual.

The code of poor laws has at length grown up into a tree, which, like the fabulous Upas, overshadows and poisons the land; unwholesome expedients were the bud, dilemmas and depravities have been the blossom, and danger and despair are the bitter fruit.

Those who bequeath unto themselves a pompous funeral, are at just so much expense to inform the world of something that had much better been concealed; namely, that their vanity has survived themselves.

Fashion is the veriest goddess of semblance and of shade; to be happy is of far less consequence to her worshippers than to appear so.

None of us are so much praised or censured as we think; and most men would be thoroughly cured of their self-importance, if they would only rehearse their own funeral, and walk abroad incognito, the very day after that on which they were supposed to have been buried.

The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain.

Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave.

Success too often sanctions the worst and the wildest schemes of human ambition.

When the cruel fall into the hands of the cruel, we read their fate with horror, not with pity.

Nobility is a river that sets with a constant and undeviating current, directly into the great Pacific Ocean of Time; but, unlike all other rivers, it is more grand at its source, than at its termination.

In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another; is there any harm in letting it alone?

Fashion ... has brought every thing into vogue, by turns.

No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.

Princes rule the people, and their own passions rule Princes; but Providence can over-rule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purposes from the vices, no less than the virtues of Kings.

Habit will reconcile us to everything but change.

We must suit the flattery to the mind and taste of the recipient. We do not put essences into hogsheads, or porter into phials. Delicate minds may be disgusted by compliments that would please a grosser intellect, as some fine ladies, who would be shocked at the idea of a dram, will not refuse a liqueur. Some indeed there are, who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are, nevertheless, to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.

Fashion ... is most capricious in her favours, often running from those that pursue her, and coming round to those that stand still. It were mad to follow her, and rash to oppose her, but neither rash nor mad to despise her.

He that places himself neither higher nor lower than he ought to do, exercises the truest humility.

There are two things which ought to teach us to think meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; for, as it surrounds us with friends, who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

Dreams ought to produce no conviction whatever on philosophical minds. If we consider how many dreams are dreamt every night, and how many events occur every day, we shall no longer wonder at those accidental coincidences, which ignorance mistakes for verifications.

Those who have earned a fortune are usually more careful of it than those who have inherited one.

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads.

What we lend, we shall most probably lose.

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.

The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful, is that they can take your life; but the same thing can be said of the most weak.

There are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.

It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman.

He that knows himself, knows others.