Keep your eye fixed not so much on what they [people] ought in reason to do, as on what they are likely to do based on their disposition and habits.

...be more guided by hope than fear.

He is less likely to be mistaken who looks forward to a change in the affairs of the world than he who regards them as firm and stable.

By numberless examples it will evidently appear that human affairs are as subject to change and fluctuation as the waters of the sea agitated by the winds.

Experience has always shown, and reason also, that affairs which depend on many seldom succeed.

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.