We feel a kind of bittersweet pricking of malicious delight in contemplating the misfortunes of others.

There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction bat revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; and should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient?

It is not my deeds that I write down, it is myself, my essence.

Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.

The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

The world is but a school of inquisition; it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses.

We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.