Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.

Constant companionship is not enjoyable, any more than constant eating. We sit too long at the table of friendship, when we outsit our appetites for each other's thoughts.

Our first and last love is self-love.

What we call conscience in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the law.

A genuine passion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.

Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbations.

We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime