Man will rise, if God by exception lends him a hand; he will rise by abandoning and renouncing his own means, and letting himselfbe raised and uplifted by purely celestial means.

We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.

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

The secret counsels of princes are a troublesome burden to such as have only to execute them.

Even in the midst of compassion we feel within I know not what tart sweet titillation of malicious pleasure in seeing others suffer; children have the same feeling.

Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.

We every day and every hour say things of another that we might more properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our observations to our own concerns.