If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world

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If friends to a government forbear their assistance, they put it in the power of a few desperate men to ruin the welfare of those who are superior to them in strength and interest

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I never knew a critic who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater himself - as the hangman is generally a worse malefactor than the criminal that suffers by his hand

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I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species

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Hypocrisy itself does great honor, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind

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Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature

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Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief

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Fame is a good so wholly foreign to our natures that we have no faculty in the soul adapted to it, nor any organ in the body to relish it; an object of desire placed out of the possibility of fruition

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Facts are plain spoken; hopes and figures are its aversion

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Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to win all the duties of life

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