I do not doubt but that genuine piety is the spring of peace of mind; it enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and lessens the pangs of death: the same cannot be said of hypocrisy.

The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.

A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.

The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.

Praise, of all things, is the most powerful excitement to commendable actions, and animates us in our enterprises.

It is virtue which should determine us in the choice of our friends, without inquiring into their good or evil fortune.

From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.