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.

How can we be answerable for what we shall want in the future, since we have no clear idea of what we want now?

Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.

One may outwit another, but not all the others.

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.

The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends.