Few maxims are true in every respect.

As soon as an opinion becomes common it is sufficient reason for men to abandon it and to uphold the opposite opinion until that in its turn grows old, and they require to distinguish themselves by other things. Thus if they attain their goal in some art or science, we must expect them soon to cast it aside to acquire some fresh fame, and this is partly the reason why the most splendid ages degenerate so quickly, and, scarcely emerged from barbarism, plunge into it again.

The counsels of old age give light without heat, like the sun in winter.

Everyone is born sincere and dies deceivers.

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.

If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.

The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers.