If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.

Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.

It is praiseworthy even to attempt a great action.

The shame that arises from praise which we do not deserve often makes us do things we should otherwise never have attempted.

Philosophy easily triumphs over past and future ills; but present ills triumph over philosophy.

It is much easier to seem fitted for posts we do not fill than for those we do.