Life is a kind of sleep: old men sleep longest, nor begin to wake but when they are to die.

Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.

Widows, like ripe fruit, drop easily from their perch.

Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses.

Both as to high and low indifferently, men are prepossessed, charmed, fascinated by success; successful crimes are praised very much like virtue itself, and good fortune is not far from occupying the place of the whole cycle of virtues. It must be an atrocious act, a base and hateful deed, which success would not be able to justify.