The first petition that we are to make to Almighty God is for a good conscience, the next for health of mind, and then of body.

The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself.

It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.

If sensuality were happiness, beasts were happier than men; but human felicity is lodged in the soul, not in the flesh.

To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading.

A thing seriously pursued affords true enjoyment.

All things are cause for either laughter or weeping.