A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.

The esteem of good men is the reward of our worth, but the reputation of the world in general is the gift of our fate.

Whatever distrust we may have of the sincerity of those who converse with us, we always believe they will tell us more truth than they do to others.

Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us.

There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.

We often boast that we are never bored; but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others.

There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing.