Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.
Fortune cures us of many faults that reason could not.
Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new.
We can be more clever than one, but not more clever than all.
Flattery is a base coin which is current only through our vanity.
He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.