Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.

Very few people are acquainted with death. They undergo it, commonly, not so much out of resolution as custom and insensitivity; and most men die because they cannot help it.

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

The judgments our enemies make about us come nearer to the truth than those we make about ourselves.

A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.

Moderation is caused by the fear of exciting the envy and contempt which those merit who are intoxicated with their good fortune; it is a vain display of our strength of mind, and in short the moderation of men at their greatest height is only a desire to appear greater than their fortune.

In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.