Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

I would like to suggest that our minds are swamped by too much study and by too much matter just as plants are swamped by too much water or lamps by too much oil; that our minds, held fast and encumbered by so many diverse preoccupations, may well lose the means of struggling free, remaining bowed and bent under the load; except that it is quite otherwise: the more our souls are filled, the more they expand; examples drawn from far-off times show, on the contrary, that great soldiers ad statesmen were also great scholars.

The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings.

One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us and whereto our passions transport us. But those which by long habit are rooted in a strong and anchored in a powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies, which diverts us here and there.

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.