Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.

Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.

To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.

Moderation in people who are contented comes from that calm that good fortune lends to their spirit.

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

All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.

Humility is the sure evidence of Christian virtues. Without it, we retain all our faults still, and they are only covered over with pride, which hides them from other men's observation, and sometimes from our own too.