If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.

If by being overstudious, we impair our health and spoil our good humor, let us give it up.

He loves little who loves by rule.

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

To speak less of oneself than what one really is, is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under a man's value, is pusillanimity and cowardice.

Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.