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.

Some men seem remarkable to the world in whom neither their wives nor their valets saw anything extraordinary. Few men have been admired by their servants.

A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted.

A man should think less of what he eats and more with whom he eats because no food is so satisfying as good company.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold...The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.

Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.