The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones.

Mortal beauty stings while it delights.

Pride is like the beautiful acacia, that lifts its head proudly above its neighbor plants-forgetting that it too, like them, has its roots in the dirt.

Activity and sadness are incompatible.