Humility is the altar upon which God wishes that we should offer Him His sacrifices.

It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.

We should often blush at our noblest deeds if the world were to see all their underlying motives.

In the intercourse of life, we please more by our faults than by our good qualities.

Our good qualities expose us more to hatred and persecution than all the ill we do.

Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.