Sometimes it is a good choice not to choose at all.
Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.
Princes give me sufficiently if they take nothing from me, and do me much good if they do me no hurt; it is all I require of them.
If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.
Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.
There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
Habit is second nature.
I do not understand; I pause; I examine.
A little of everything and nothing thoroughly, after the French fashion.
I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time.
Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.
If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?
Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing.
I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken’s neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.
To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.
I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it; the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.
It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.
I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more willfully obstinate.
My opinion is that we must lend ourselves to others and give ourselves only to ourselves. If my will happened to be prone to mortgage and attach itself, I would not last: I am too tender, both by nature and by practice.
Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.