Nothing is so contagious as example; never was there any considerable good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and had ones through a malignity in our nature, which shame conceals, and example sets at liberty.

The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.

The health of the soul is as precarious as that of the body; for when we seem secure from passions, we are no less in danger of their infection than we are of falling ill when we appear to be well.

It is sometimes a point of as much cleverness to know to make good use of advice from others as to be able give good advice to oneself.

Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to cover the defects of the mind.

To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself

Men are not only prone to forget benefits; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.