Waste no time with revolutions that do not remove the causes of your complaints but simply change the faces of those in charge.

Be careful how you do one man a pleasure which must needs occasion equal displeasure in another. For he who is thus slighted will not forget, but will think the offence to himself the greater in that another profits by it; while he who receives the pleasure will either not remember it, or will consider the favour done him less than it really was.

The return we reap from generous actions is not always evident.

To give vent now and then to his feelings, whether of pleasure or discontent, is a great ease to a man's heart.

We fight to great disadvantage when we fight with those who have nothing to lose.

Like other men, I have sought honours and preferment, and often have obtained them beyond my wishes or hopes. Yet never have I found in them that content which I had figured beforehand in my mind. A strong reason, if we well consider it, why we should disencumber ourselves of vain desires.

Let no one trust so entirely to natural prudence as to persuade himself that it will suffice to guide him without help from experience.