There is no one who cannot derive great help and great benefit from learning; but there are also only a few people who do not receive a great harm from the light and knowledge they have received by learning, unless they use their knowledge in a manner both fit and natural for them.

We prefer people who are trying to imitate us more than those who are trying to equal us. This is because imitation is a sign of esteem, but the desire to equal others is a sign of envy.

It is an admirable skill to able to sweeten a refusal with civil words which atone for the favor which we are not able to grant.

There is a certain hidden mediocrity in those who are stationed above us in life, an ability to take liberties in their pursuit of pleasures and diversions, without injuring the honor and respect we owe to them.

Although we should not love our friends for the good that they do us, it is a sign that they do not love us much if they do not do us good when they have the power to do so.

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.

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.