A society composed of none but the wicked could not exist; it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and without a flood, would be swept away from the earth by the deluge of its own iniquity.
Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over.
It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.
Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.
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.
A man’s profundity may keep him from opening on a first interview, and his caution on a second; but I should suspect his emptiness, if he carried on his reserve to a third.
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.
