The miserable are sacred.
We pray for trifles without so much as a thought of the greatest blessings; and we are not ashamed many times, to ask God for that which we should blush to own to our neighbor.
It is remarkable that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand; but iron, gold, and silver, being both the instruments of blood and slaughter and the price of it, nature has hidden in the bowels of the earth.
Corporeal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
He is greedy of life who is not willing to die when the world is perishing around him.
Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy.
Let the weary at length possess quiet rest.
Self-denial is the best riches.
Know thyself; this is the great object.
Watch over yourself. Be your own accuser, then your judge; ask yourself grace sometimes, and, if there is need, impose upon yourself some pain.
I will have a care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a shameful, and the heaviest of all servitudes; and this may be done by moderate desires.
When thou hast profited so much that thou respectest even thyself, thou mayst let go thy tutor.
Servitude seizes on few, but many seize on her.
Although a man has so well purged his mind that nothing can trouble or deceive him any more, yet he reached his present innocence through sin.
If we desire to judge justly, we must persuade ourselves that none of us is without sin.
All that lies betwixt the cradle and the grave is uncertain.
Vice is contagious, and there is no trusting the sound and the sick together.
We pardon familiar vices.
No man is born wise; but wisdom and virtue require a tutor; though we can easily learn to be vicious without a master.
Virtue is shut out from no one; she is open to all, accepts all, invites all, gentlemen, freedmen, slaves, kings, and exiles; she selects neither house nor fortune; she is satisfied with a human being without adjuncts.