To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people; intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves; therefore the former make us universally popular, the latter unpopular.

Truth is most beautiful undraped.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible