The true felicity of life is to be free from anxieties and pertubations; to understand and do our duties to God and man, and to enjoy the present without any serious dependence on the future.

Precepts are the rules by which we ought to square our lives. When they are contracted into sentences, they strike the affections; whereas admonition is only blowing of the coal.

The acquisition of riches has been to many not an end to their miseries, but a change in them: The fault is not in the riches, but the disposition.

He who seeks wisdom is a wise man; he who thinks he has found it is mad.

We must take care to live not merely a long life, but a full one; for living a long life requires only good fortune, but living a full life requires character. Long is the life that is fully lived; it is fulfilled only when the mind supplies its own good qualities and empowers itself from within.

The shortest road to wealth lies in the contempt of wealth.

It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.