The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble; but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned.

We all covet wealth, but not its perils.

One must laugh before one is happy, or one may die without ever laughing at all.

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

Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful.

We should laugh before being happy, for fear of dying without having laughed.

To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!