The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.

Praise is always pleasing, let it come from whom, or upon what account it will.

There are few men who durst publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.

Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.

It is in vain that we get upon stilts, for, once on them, it is still with our legs that we must walk. And on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own ass.

Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have but a very little share in it.

No man divulges his revenue, or at least which way it comes in: but every one publishes his acquisitions.

Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.

Decency, not to dare to do that in public which it is decent enough to do in private.

I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more willfully obstinate.