Praise is always pleasing, let it come from whom, or upon what account it will.

The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts; if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.

One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us and whereto our passions transport us. But those which by long habit are rooted in a strong and anchored in a powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies, which diverts us here and there.

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.

I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.

Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.