You must appear to notice little at the first, and show yourself a good companion.

When you become acquainted with the bosom sins and pleasant vices of folk in high position, you can lead them on the path of virtue at your pleasure.

You must certainly tell them then that indulgence in sensuality, falsehood, fraud, violence, covetousness, and tyrannical oppression, is unconditionally wrong.

Make no show of compromise with evil in the gross; but refine away the evil by distinctions, reservations, hypothetical conditions, until it disappears.

Explain how hard it is to know whether a sin be venial or mortal, and how many chances there are against its being in any strict sense a sin at all.