Were we perfectly acquainted with the object, we should never passionately desire it.

We are lazier in our minds than in our bodies.

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.

Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even when it casts away vanity.

The passions of youth are not more dangerous to health than is the lukewarmness of old age.

Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.

We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.