The sicknesses of the soul have their ups and downs like those of the body; what we take to be a cure is most often merely a respite or change of disease.

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

Nothing ought more to humiliate men who have merited great praise than the care they still take to boast of little things.

Without humility, we keep all our defects; and they are only crusted over by pride, which conceals them from others, and often from ourselves.

Truth does less good in the world than its appearances do harm.

He that fancies such a sufficiency in himself that he can live without all the world is greatly mistaken; but he that imagines himself so necessary that other people cannot live without him is a great deal more mistaken.

Minds of moderate caliber ordinarily condemn everthing which is beyond their range.