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

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

Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.

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

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

If you attempt certain things at the right time, they are easy to accomplish - in fact, they almost get done by themselves. If you undertake them before the time is right, not only will they fail, but they will often become impossible to accomplish even when the time would have been right.

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.