The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. [However disappointment can always be removed if we remember it could have turned out worse.]

Affected simplicity is an elegant imposture.

We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.

Hope and fear are inseparable.

There are few people who are more often in the wrong than those who cannot endure to be so.