Tastes in young people are changed by natural impetuosity, and in the aged are preserved by habit.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

Avarice misapprehends itself almost always. There is no passion which more often will miss its aim, nor upon which the present has so much influence to the prejudice of the future.

L'absence diminue les mediocres passions, et augmente les grandes,comme le vent eteint les bougies, et allume le feu. Absence diminishes commonplace passions, and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire.

We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.

We never desire strongly, what we desire rationally.

Hope is the last thing that dies in man.