Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

If others surpass you in knowledge, in charm, in strength, in fortune, you have other causes to blame for it; but if you yield tothem in stoutness of heart you have only yourself to blame.

It is a rare life that remains orderly even in private.

I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it; the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.

Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity!