As the rays of the sun, notwithstanding their velocity, injure not the eye, by reason of their minuteness, so the attacks of envy, notwithstanding their number, ought not to wound our virtue by reason of their insignificance.

Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.

If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.

Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.

A beautiful woman, if poor, should use double circumspection; for her beauty will tempt others, her poverty herself.