Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness. The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort. To want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.

Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.

Economy is too late when you are at the bottom of your purse.

Nobody becomes guilty by fate.

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

That moderation which nature prescribes, which limits our desires by resources restricted to our needs, has abandoned the field; it has now come to this -- that to want only what is enough is a sign both of boorishness and of utter destitution.