Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.

It takes strong ears indeed to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship. For it is a healthy love that will risk wounding or offending in order to profer a benefit.

A man should not so much respect what he eats, as with whom he eats.

Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.

We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?

We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.

I do not understand; I pause; I examine.