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.

Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

Fame is a good so wholly foreign to our natures that we have no faculty in the soul adapted to it, nor any organ in the body to relish it; an object of desire placed out of the possibility of fruition.

An evil intention perverts the best actions, and makes them sins.