The man who backbites an ...

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.
The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.

Quotes from the same author

Let arms give place to the robe, and the laurel of the warriors yield to the tongue of the orator.
Philosophy is the true mother of science.
Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.
This wine is forty years old. It certainly doesn't show its age.
If you would abolish covetousness, you must abolish its mother, profusion.