False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.

We seek our happiness outside ourselves, and in the opinion of men we know to be flatterers, insincere, unjust, full of envy, caprice and prejudice.

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

We seldom repent talking little, but very often talking too much.

There is what is called the highway to posts and honor, and there is a cross and by way, which is much the shortest.

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!

They that have lived a single day have lived an age.