We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
For the mind is all the easier to teach before it is set.
Fear of the future is worse than one’s present fortune.
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
A Woman who is generous with her money is to be praised; not so, if she is generous with her person.
To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
She abounds with lucious faults.
Sayings designed to raise a laugh are generally untrue and never complimentary. Laughter is never far removed from derision.
Give me the boy who rouses when he is praised, who profits when he is encouraged and who cries when he is defeated. Such a boy will be fired by ambition; he will be stung by reproach, and animated by preference; never shall I apprehend any bad consequences from idleness in such a boy.
Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.
By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but by writing well we are brought to write quickly.
Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering.
The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.
It is much easier to try one’s hand at many things than to concentrate one’s powers on one thing.
Give bread to a stranger, in the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men under the common father of nature.
Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.
Those who wish to appear learned to fools, appear as fools to the learned.
Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
A man who tries to surpass another may perhaps succeed in equaling inot actually surpassing him, but one who merely follows can never quite come up with him: a follower, necessarily, is always behind.
Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.