Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find.
I am like a book, with pages that have stuck together for want of use: my mind needs unpacking and the truths stored within must be turned over from time to time, to be ready when occasion demands.
The bounty of nature is too little for the greedy person.
We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing.
It’s the admirer and the watcher who provoke us to all the inanities we commit.
Calamity is virtue’s opportunity.
Disease is not of the body but of the place.
He who repents of having sinned is almost innocent.
What once were vices are manners now.
Nothing is so contemptible as the sentiments of the mob.
That moderation which nature prescribes, which limits our desires by resources restricted to our needs, has abandoned the field; it has now come to this – that to want only what is enough is a sign both of boorishness and of utter destitution.
Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one.
Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.
Remove severe restraint and what will become of virtue?
The acquisition of riches has been to many not an end to their miseries, but a change in them: The fault is not in the riches, but the disposition.
Whatever has overstepped its due bounds is always in a state of instability.
Many shed tears merely for show, and have dry eyes when no one’s around to observe them.
Life is most delightful on the downward slope.
That which achieves its effect by accident is not art.
Every one has time if he likes. Business runs after nobody: people cling to it of their own free will and think that to be busy is a proof of happiness.