Philosophy easily triumphs over past and future ills; but present ills triumph over philosophy.

The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. [However disappointment can always be removed if we remember it could have turned out worse.]

What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

The only thing constant in life is change

A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love.

The greatest part of our faults are more excusable than the methods that are commonly taken to conceal them.