Piety with some people, but especially with women, is either a passion, or an infirmity of age, or a fashion which must be followed.

It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men's opinions than to bring them over to ours.

From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.

There are three great events in our lives: birth, life and death. Of birth we have no conscience; with death, we suffer; and, concerning life, we forget to live it.

You think him to be your dupe; if he feigns to be so who is the greater dupe, he or you?

The Great slight the men of wit, who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the Great, who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit they have not virtue.

The spendthrift robs his heirs the miser robs himself.