Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.

He that is much flattered soon learns to flatter himself.

Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible