For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave; in bed, beauty before goodness.

The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine.

Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.

He whose mouth is out of taste says the wine is flat.

Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.

To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books; they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.

Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.