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 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.
A man must not always tell all, for that be folly; but what a man says should be what he thinks.
There is no so wretched and coarse a soul wherein some particular faculty is not seen to shine.
How many worthy men have we known to survive their own reputation, who have seen and suffered the honor and glory most justly acquired in their youth, extinguished in their own presence?
Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them.
Intemperance is the plaque of sensuality, and temperance is not its bane but its seasoning.
Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful.
A hair shirt does not always render those chaste who wear it.