There is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury...but envy can gain nothing but vexation.

Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.

I am myself the matter of my book.

I would rather produce my passions than brood over them at my expense; they grow languid when they have vent and expression. It is better that their point should operate outwardly than be turned against us.

Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around, building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like silkworms, and is suffocated in it. A mouse in a pitch barrel...thinks it notices from a distance some sort of glimmer of imaginary light and truth; but while running toward it, it is crossed by so many difficulties and obstacles, and diverted by so many new quests, that it strays from the road, bewildered.

Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.