I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.

The world is but a perpetual see-saw.

Women are more susceptible to pain than to pleasure.

Repentance is no other than a recanting of the will, and opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please.

I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet.

Ambition is, of all other, the most contrary humor to solitude; and glory and repose are so inconsistent that they cannot possibly inhabit one and the same place; and for so much as I understand, those have only their arms and legs disengaged from the crowd, their mind and intention remain engaged behind more than ever.

Some, either from being glued to vice by a natural attachment, or from long habit, no longer recognize its ugliness.