Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.

Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.

Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.

Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.

He that would be a great man must learn to turn every accident to some advantage.

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.

It is with certain good qualities as with the senses; those who have them not can neither appreciate nor comprehend them in others.