I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.
Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.
Books are a languid pleasure.
We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.
The first distinction among men, and the first consideration that gave one precedence over another, was doubtless the advantage of beauty.
Beauty is the true prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that our sex, though naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but when puerile and beardless, confused and mixed with theirs.
If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition’s sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant; that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.
If love and ambition should be in equal balance, and come to jostle with equal force, I make no doubt but that the last would win the prize.
Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping themselves always in show, like the statue of a public place.
Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.
Lovers are angry, reconciled, entreat, thank, appoint, and finally speak all things, by their.
The worst condition of humans is when they lose knowledge and control of themselves.
There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil; to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.
The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.
The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.
Whatever is preached to us, and whatever we learn, we should still remember that it is man that gives, and man that receives; it is a mortal hand that presents it to us, it is a mortal hand that accepts it.
Nature has made us a present of a broad capacity for entertaining ourselves apart, and often calls us to do so, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but in the best part to ourselves.
Whatever are the benefits of fortune, they yet require a palate fit to relish and taste them.