Games are good or bad as to their nature; all may be perverted.

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.

All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.

Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.

No man was ever great by imitation.

There is no being so poor and so contemptible, who does not think there is somebody still poorer, and still more contemptible.

Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.