The art of pleasing is the art of deception.

Sometimes a lengthened period of prosperity melts away in a moment; just as the heat of summer flies before a day of tempest.

The generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes away the feeling for great ones.

Reason deceives us more often than does nature.

We are almost always guilty of the hate we encounter.

Great men are sometimes so even in small things.

The mind reaches great heights only by spurts.