There are many who say more than the truth on some occasions, and balance the account with their consciences by saying less than the truth on others. But the fact is that they are in both instances as fraudulant as he would be that exacted more than his due from his debtors, and paid less than their due to his creditors.

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.

Is the Deity able to prevent evil, but not willing, where is his benevolence; is he willing, but not able, where is his power; is he both able and willing, whence then is evil?

Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food.

Of present fame think little, and of future less. The praises that we receive after we are buried, like the posies that are strewn over our graves, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead; the dead are gone, either to a place where they hear them not, or where, if they do, they will despise them.

Death is the only sovereign whom no partiality can warp, and no price corrupt.

Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.

Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not, it were better that nothing should be. Without her, wisdom is but a shadow, and virtue a name; she is their sovereign mistress; for her alone they labour, and by her they will be paid; to enjoy her, and to communicate her, is the object of their efforts, and the consummation of their toil.

Pride either finds a desert, or makes one; submission cannot tame its ferocity, nor satiety fill its voracity, and it requires very costly food--its keeper's happiness.

Society is a sphere that demands all our energies, and deserves all that it demands.

Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travellers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.

It is far more easy to pull down, than to build up, and to destroy, than to preserve. Revolutions have on this account been falsely supposed to be fertile of great talent; as the dregs rise to the top, during a fermentation, and the lightest things are carried highest by the whirlwind. And the practice of this proposition bears out the theory; for demagogues have succeeded tolerably well in making ruins; but the moment they begin to build anew from the materials that they have overthrown, they have often been uselessly employed with regard to others, and more often dangerously with regard to themselves.

Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity.

All wars of interference, arising from an officious intrusion into the concerns of other states; all wars of ambition, carried on for the purposes of aggrandizement; and all wars of aggression, undertaken for the purpose of forcing an assent to this or that set of religious opinions; all such wars are criminal in their very outset, and have hypocrisy for their common base.

If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you.

He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice, should go a little farther and try to plant a virtue in its place, otherwise he will have his labour to renew; a strong soil that has produced weeds, may be made to produce wheat, with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.

Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where, although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived; since words that cost little are exchanged for hopes that cost less. But we must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much; for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient.

Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.

If a man could make gold, he would incur a double danger, first, from his own avarice, and secondly from the avarice of other men. The first would make him a slave, or the second a prisoner; for princes and potentates would think a goldmaker a very convenient member of their exchequer.

Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.

There is this of good in real evils, they deliver us while they last from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason--they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.