Virtue is too often merely local.

Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.

Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself

We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.

Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.

When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality.

There is always something a woman will prefer to the truth.