A good disposition is more valuable than gold, for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.
The greatest sweetener of human life is friendship.
Peaceable times are the best to live in, though not so proper to furnish materials for a writer.
There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.
A friend exaggerates a man's virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes.
The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace.