A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains-absolutely.

Most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteelly: he may cheat at cards genteelly

Many might go to heaven with half the labour they go to hell, if they would venture their industry the right way.

There is scarcely any man sufficiently clever to appreciate all the evil he does.

Violence and wrong enclose all who commit them in their meshes and do mostly recoil on him from whom they begin.

Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law.

There is no shame in the accidents of chance, but only in the consequence of our own misdeeds.

He who is bent on doing evil can never want occasion.

It is so often on the name of a misdeed that a life goes to pieces, not the nameless and personal action itself, which was perhaps a perfectly definite necessity of that life and would have been absorbed by it without effort.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Make deeds ill done!