Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.

Virtue has needs of limits.

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.

In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength.

Wonderful maxim: not to talk of things any more after they are done.

Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.

The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents; divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.