When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

There is nothing which continues longer than a moderate fortune; nothing of which one sees sooner the end than a large fortune.

The fool only is troublesome. A plan of sense perceives when he is agreeable or tiresome; he disappears the very minute before he would have been thought to have stayed too long.

We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.

There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one's own industry or by the stupidity of others.

Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor and conscience, to obtain them: It is to pay so dear from them that the bargain is a loss.

A vain man finds it wise to speak good or ill of himself; a modest man does not talk of himself.