“Weakness ever sympathizes with vice, because vice is a weakness which assumes the mask of strength. Madness holds reason in horror, and on all subjects it delights in the exaggerations of falsehood. The cause of all bewitchments, the poison of all philtres, the power of all sorcerers are there.”

“Of all the causes which conspire to blindMan's erring judgement, and misguide the mind,What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is PRIDE, the never-failing vice of fools.”

“Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.”

“Suicides do not end their lives because they are weak, mentally ill, or depressed - though certainly they may be all those things. They are in blinding, all-consuming psychic pain, and perhaps on that final poisonous day they can find no reason not to.”

“True vice, my lady, would frighten us all, if it did not wear the mask of virtue. (p.56)”

“Babbling may be a weakness, but to my thinking mystery is a vice.”