“Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.”

Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.

What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.

It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved.

Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment.

It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.

We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.

No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.

The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.

We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

Some people displease with merit, and others’ very faults and defects are pleasing.

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.

The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.

Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.

The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything

I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency.

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.

I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.

Fog and hypocrisy – that is to say, shadow, convention, decency – these were the very things that lent to London its poetry and romance.

Politics are not my concern. They impressed me as a dog’s life without a dog’s decencies.