To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.
Men throw themselves on foreign assistances to spare their own, which, after all, are the only certain and sufficient ones.
There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
It is a rare life that remains orderly even in private.
If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.