There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, or to dispute, forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from self-opinion.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

It is in vain that we get upon stilts, for once on them, it is still with our legs that we must walk. And on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own ass.

The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting.

Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.

A man has need of tough ears to hear himself fairly judged.