We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.

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.

Dissembling profiteth nothing; a feigned countenance, and slightly forged externally, deceiveth but very few.

Many things have fallen only to rise higher.

As long as we are among humans, let us be humane.

Life's neither a good nor an evil: it's a field for good and evil.

The expression of truth is simplicity.