The breeding we give young people is ordinarily but an additional self-love, by which we make them have a better opinion of themselves.

That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.

Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.

Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.

The contempt of riches in the philosophers was a concealed desire of revenging on fortune the injustice done to their merit, by despising the good she denied them.

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.

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