Aphorisms

We should often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world saw all the motives that produce them.

Self-love is cleverer than the cleverest man in the world.

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.

We have just religion enough to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

Flattery’s the food of fools.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.

Falsehood flies, and Truth comes limping after it.

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

Pocket: the cradle of motive and the grave of conscience.

Patience: a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.