Nothing is rarer than real goodness.

The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune.

Affected simplicity is an elegant imposture.

The truest comparison we can make of love is to liken it to a fever; we have no more power over the one than the other, either as to its violence or duration.

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.

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

What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honor of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.