Death, like the sun, cannot be looked at steadily.

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.

Nothing is more contagious than example, and no man does any exceeding good or exceeding ill but it spawns new deeds of the same kind. The good we imitate through emulation, the ill through the malignity of our nature, which shame keeps locked up, but example sets free.

What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one.

There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it.

We are always bored by the very people by whom it is vital not to be bored.

We have not strength enough to follow our reason so far as it would carry us.