I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken’s neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.
To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.
I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it; the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.
It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.
I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more willfully obstinate.
My opinion is that we must lend ourselves to others and give ourselves only to ourselves. If my will happened to be prone to mortgage and attach itself, I would not last: I am too tender, both by nature and by practice.
Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.
Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.
We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?
If health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very good fellow; if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humor, and inaccessible.
The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.
It is no hard matter to get children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up.
Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.
In love, ’tis no other than frantic desire for that which flies from us.
I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.
No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.
How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.