An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.
Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, if she would have had me.
When Socrates, after being relieved of his irons, felt the relish of the itching that their weight had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to consider the close alliance between pain and pleasure.
The most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to keep itself upright from being overthrown by its own weakness.
Truth and reason are common to everyone, and are no more his who spake them first than his who speaks them after.
Experience stands on its own dunghill in medicine, and reason yields it place. Medicine has always professed experience to be the touchstone of its operations.
A well-bred man is always sociable and complaisant.
After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, it is not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass, that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.
In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.
A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awake his vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty. And there is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline.
Who is only good that others may know it, and that he may be the better esteemed when ’tis known, who will do well but upon condition that his virtue may be known to men, is one from whom much service is not to be expected.
We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him.
Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so the smallest affairs disturb us most.
Time steals away without any inconvenience.
Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.
We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so clearly in my sleep; but as to my being awake, I never found it clear enough and free from clouds.
It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.
It is easier to sacrifice great than little things.
Vice leaves repentance in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other griefs and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance.
Repentance is no other than a recanting of the will, and opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please.