To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.

When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent.

The distempers of the soul have their relapses, as many and as dangerous as those of the body; and what we take for a perfect cureis generally either an abatement of the same disease or the changing of that for another.

Perseverance is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy; for it seems to be only the enduring of certain inclinations and opinions which men neither give themselves nor take away from themselves.

Some people are so extremely whiffling and inconsiderable that they are as far from any real faults as from substantial virtues.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

There is many a virtuous woman weary of her trade.