Silence is the best security to the man who distrusts himself.

There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it.

It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.

The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride; it seems to nourish and augment it; it deprives them of knowledge of remedies which can solace their miseries and can cure their faults.

No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.

It is much easier to seem fitted for posts we do not fill than for those we do.

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