That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.

You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.

It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.

There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.

The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, has of all animals the nimblest tongue.