Ignorance makes for weakness and fear; knowledge gives strength and confidence. Nothing surprises an intellect that knows all things with a sense of discrimination.

Often the desire to appear competent impedes our ability to become competent, because we more anxious to display our knowledge than to learn what we do not know.

It is such a great fault to talk too much that, in business and conversation, if what is good is also brief, it is doubly good, and one gains by brevity what one often loses by an excess of words.

Even the best-natured people, if uninstructed, are always blind and uncertain. We must take pains to instruct ourselves so that ignorance makes us neither too timid nor too bold.

When people reproach us, they only increase their own failings even as they are disclaiming them.

All the great amusements are dangerous for the Christian life.

Self-love is even deceived by self-love, because by looking out for our own interests and disregarding those of other people, we lose the advantage that comes with the exchange of favors.