Difficulties elicit talents that in more fortunate circumstances would lie dormant.
Necessity takes impartially the highest and the lowest.
Do you count your birthdays with gratitude?
Our parents, worse than our grandparents, gave birth to us who are worse than they, and we shall in our turn bear offspring still more evil.
The mob will now and then see things in a right light.
Avoid greatness in a cottage there may be more real happiness than kings or their favourites enjoy.