To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself

Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.

There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.

Great men should not have great faults.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.

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.]