You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday

A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice.

Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.

The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.

It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.