Thus self-love as one part of human nature, and the several particular principles as the other part, are, themselves, their objects and ends, stated and shown.

The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice.

Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed.

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food

But to us, probability is the very guide of life.

Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections.

Every man is to be considered in two capacities, the private and public; as designed to pursue his own interest, and likewise to contribute to the good of others.

Love of our neighbour, then, has just the same respect to, is no more distant from, self-love, than hatred of our neighbour, or than love or hatred of anything else.

As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.

Happiness does not consist in self-love.

Almost anyone can be an author

The difference between a novelist and someone who tinkers around with writing is this: novelists finish their books.

A bumper sticker from the 1970s read, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

Finance is the art of passing money from hand to hand until it finally disappears.

I have the loving support of my girlfriend who still attends Wake Forest and is nearing graduation. She helps me cope with the everyday rigors of being an NBA player.

Faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other.

And thus of all my harvest-hope I have Nought reaped but a weedye crop of care.

LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.

They swoon over Tom, who preens for them, bowing, which sets them to blushing and giggling. God help us all.

It is now becoming clear that everything can - and probably did - come from nothing.