Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great ones.

We love everything on our own account; we even follow our own taste and inclination when we prefer our friends to ourselves; and yet it is this preference alone that constitutes true and perfect friendship.

Nothing is more contagious than example, and no man does any exceeding good or exceeding ill but it spawns new deeds of the same kind. The good we imitate through emulation, the ill through the malignity of our nature, which shame keeps locked up, but example sets free.

We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.

There are heroes of wickedness, as there are of goodness.

When our hatred is violent, it sinks us even beneath those we hate.

No man can love a second time the person whom he has once truly ceased to love.