Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.

It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.

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

Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society.

Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.

We may so seize on virtue, that if we embrace it with an overgreedy and violent desire, it may become vicious.

The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.