No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.
The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.
Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.
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.
War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.
Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.
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.
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.
Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.