"Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity, than straightforward and simple integrity in another"
"It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck"
"He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still"
"Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost"
"When you have nothing to say, say nothing"
"We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed"
"True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander"
"The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world"
"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"
"Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable"
"Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another"
"In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it"
"The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down"
"The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame"
"Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores"
"To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author"
"When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good"
"Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more"
"If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition"
"He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place"
