Novelty is to love like bloom to fruit; it gives a luster which is easily effaced, but never returns.

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils, but present evils triumph over it.

Avarice is more directly opposed to thrift than generosity is.

Unfaithfulness ought to extinguish love, and we should not be jealous when there is reason to be. Only those who give no grounds for jealousy are worthy of it.

The passions are the only orators which always persuade.

The measure of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.