We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.
Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil’s alphabet – the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.
Few men have been admired of their familiars.
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
The confidence in another man’s virtue is no light evidence of a man’s own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.
The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.
The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.
Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its masters indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!
Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.
Seneca’s virtue shows forth so live and vigorous in his writings, and the defense is so clear there against some of these imputations, as that of his wealth and excessive spending, that I would not believe any testimony to the contrary.
The sage says that all that is under heaven incurs the same law and the same fate.
As far as fidelity is concerned, there is no animal in the world as treacherous as man.
T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.
We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.
We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn .
The day of your birth leads you to death as well as to life .