Epicurus says, "gratitude is a virtue that has commonly profit annexed to it." And where is the virtue that has not? But still the virtue is to be valued for itself, and not for the profit that attends it.

Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate, and not less great is the man to whom all his plate is no more that earthenware.

Drunkenness is nothing else but a voluntary madness.

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit

A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner; it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many.

What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then.

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.