'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off; who can control himself and obey his own principles.' The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.

Women are more susceptible to pain than to pleasure.

Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.

There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers.

Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.

There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.

To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.