As the great ones of this world are unable to bestow health of body or peace of mind, we always pay too high a price for any good they can do.
How can we be answerable for what we shall want in the future, since we have no clear idea of what we want now?
Luxury and excessive refinement are sure forerunners of the decadence of states, because when all individuals seek their own interests they neglect the public weal.
All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.
Silence is the safest policy if you are unsure of yourself.
Moderation is like sobriety: you would like to have some more, but are afraid of making yourself ill.
It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.
Some weak people are so sensible of their weakness as to be able to make a good use of it.
Gratitude is like the good faith of traders: it maintains commerce, and we often pay, not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we may more readily find people to trust us.
Ability wins us the esteem of the true men; luck, that of the people.
He that would be a great man must learn to turn every accident to some advantage.
Some people resemble ballads which are only sung for a certain time.
There are few occasions when we should make a bad bargain by giving up the good on condition that no ill was said of us.
It is worth nothing to be young without being beautiful, nor to be beautiful without being young.
Too great refinement is false delicacy, and true delicacy is solid refinement.
It is a species of coquetry to make a parade of never practising it.
Reason alone is insufficient to make us enthusiastic in any matter.
There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.
Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility, which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease.
Hope is the last thing that dies in man.