Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome.

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.

He who falls obstinate in his courage, if he falls he fights from his knees.

The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting.

I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.

It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them.

Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.