Our temper sets a price upon every gift that we receive from fortune.

Selfishness is the grand moving principle of nine-tenths of our actions.

We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible.

In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances.

Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can; and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.

There are certain people fated to be fools; they not only commit follies by choice, but are even constrained to do so by fortune.

Men are often so foolish as to boast and value themselves upon their passions, even those that are most vicious. But envy is a passion so full of cowardice and shame that no one every ever had the confidence to own it.