The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

A man may be sharper than another, but not than all others.

Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit.

As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.

The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.

One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world.