Let the trumpet of the day of judgment sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand before the Sovereign Judge, and cry with a loud voice, This is my work, there were my thoughts, and thus was I. I have freely told both the good and the bad, have hid nothing wicked, added nothing good.

It is not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish.

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.

Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment.

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?

A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.

No one is happy unless he respects himself.