Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.

Our wisdom lies as much at the mercy of fortune as our possessions do.

Hope is the last thing that dies in man; and though it be exceedingly deceitful, yet it is of this good use to us, that while we are traveling through life it conducts us in an easier and more pleasant way to our journey's end.

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

We sometimes differ more widely from ourselves than we do from others.

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

Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three.