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

It is easier to enrich ourselves with a thousand virtues, than to correct ourselves of a single fault.

It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.

I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.

A well-born man is fortunate, but so is the man about whom people no longer ask, 'is he well-born?'

We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much: a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows and, but which all the world does not practice

The best thing next to wit is a consciousness that it is not in us; without wit, a man might then know how to behave himself, so as not to appear to be a fool or a coxcomb.