Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.

The passions do very often give birth to others of a nature most contrary to their own. Thus avarice sometimes brings forth prodigality, and prodigality avarice; a man's resolution is very often the effect of levity, and his boldness that of cowardice and fear.

There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.

All who know their own minds know not their own hearts.

Happy people rarely correct their faults; they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways.