In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk – they are all part of the curriculum.
Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!
What harm cause not those huge draughts or pictures which wanton youth with chalk or coals draw in each passage, wall or stairs of our great houses, whence a cruel contempt of our natural store is bred in them?
There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.
Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves.
Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.
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.