If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.

Desire is the very essence of man

Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.