Many exceedingly rich men are unhappy, but many middling circumstances are fortunate.

How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.

Envy is so natural to human kind, that it cannot but arise.

Chances rule men and not men chances.

But this I know: if all mankind were to take their troubles to market with the idea of exchanging them, anyone seeing what his neighbor's troubles were like would be glad to go home with his own.

All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.

They [the Persians] are accustomed to deliberate on matters of the highest moment when warm with wine; but whatever they in this situation may determine is again proposed to them on the morrow, in their cooler moments, by the person in whose house they had before assembled. If at this time also it meet their approbation, it is executed; otherwise it is rejected. Whatever also they discuss when sober, is always a second time examined after they have been drinking.