True merit does not depend on the times or on fashion. Those who have no other advantage than courtly manners lose it when they are away from court. But good sense, knowledge, and wisdom make their possessors knowledgeable and beloved in all ages and in all times.

It is base to take advantage of our rank or greatness by making fun of those placed beneath us in life.

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.

Pettiness of mind, ignorance and presumption are the cause of stubbornness, because stubborn people only want to believe what they themselves can imagine, and they can imagine very few things.

It is vain and useless to survey everything that goes on in the world if our study does not help us mend our ways.

Virtue is not always where it seems to be. People sometimes acknowledge favors only to maintain their reputations, and to make themselves more impudently ungrateful for favors that they do not wish to acknowledge.

To be too dissatisfied with ourselves is a weakness. To be too satisfied with ourselves is a stupidity.