Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom.

Avarice misapprehends itself almost always. There is no passion which more often will miss its aim, nor upon which the present has so much influence to the prejudice of the future.

It is often hard to determine whether a clear, open, and honorable proceeding is the result of goodness or of cunning.

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.

The health of the soul is something we can be no more sure of than that of the body; and though a man may seem far from the passions, yet he is in as much danger of falling into them as one in a perfect state of health of having a fit of sickness.

The hunger for applause is the source for all conscious literature and heroism

Whatever pretended causes we may blame our afflictions upon, it is often nothing but self-interest and vanity that produce them.