If ever I should affect injustice, it would be in this, that I might do courtesies and receive none.

Discontents are sometimes the better part of our life. I know not well which is the most useful; joy I may choose for pleasure, but adversities are the best for profit; and sometimes those do so far help me, as I should, without them, want much of the joy I have.

Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it.

Negligence is the rust of the soul that corrodes through all her best resolves.

Surely, if we considered detraction to be bred of envy, nested only in deficient minds, we should find that the applauding of virtue would win us far more honor than the seeking slyly to disparage it. That would show we loved what we commended, while this tells the world we grudge at what we want in ourselves.

Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.

The irresolute man flecks from one egg to another, so hatches nothing.