It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.

The more a person indulges himself the less others are willing to indulge him.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

To the mean all becomes mean.

That little hypocrites and half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account the laws of nature are constantly broken; such an enhancement of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.