In truth, the care and expense of our fathers aims only at furnishing our heads with knowledge; of judgement and virtue, little news.

Courtesy, like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and inclination to love one another at the first sight, and in the very beginning of our acquaintance and familiarity; and, consequently, that which first opens the door for us to better ourselves by the example of others, if there be anything in the society worth notice

A man must always study, but he must not always go to school: what a contemptible thing is an old abecedarian!

The archer who overshoots his mark does no better than he who falls short of it.

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.

Most pleasures embrace us but to strangle.

God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification