It is a way of calling a man a fool when no attention is given to what he says.

It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone what it compares its situation to that can make anyone happy or miserable. Compare it to something better - result envy, frustration and sadness. Compare it to something worse - relief, gratitude and happiness.

The common people do not judge of vice or virtue by morality or immorality, so much as by the stamp that is set upon it by men of figure.

Partiality in a parent is unlucky; for fondlings are in danger to be made fools.

Humor is the offspring of man; it comes forth like Minerva, fully armed from the brain.

Money does all things,--for it gives and it takes away; it makes honest men and knaves, fools and philosophers; and so forward, mutatis mutandis, to the end of the chapter.

What man in his right senses, that has wherewithal to live free, would make himself a slave for superfluities? What does that man want who has enough? Or what is he the better for abundance that can never be satisfied.