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

“Raillery is more insupportable than wrong; because we have a right to resent injuries, but are ridiculous in being angry at a jest.”

“People are more slanderous from vanity than from malice.”

“We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.”

“We often act treacherously more from weakness than from a fixed motive.”

“If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.”

“The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.”

“The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.”