Vanity, shame, and above all disposition, often make men brave and women chaste.

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

Hope and fear are inseparable.

The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.

People would never fall in love if they hadn't heard love talked about.

When the philosophers despised riches, it was because they had a mind to vindicate their own merit, and take revenge upon the injustice of fortune by vilifying those enjoyments which she had not given them.

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.