We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.

We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great ones.

Perfect courage and utter cowardice are two extremes which rarely occur.

Virtue is to the soul what health is tot he body.

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.

Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.

Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge; and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.