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

We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

As was his language so was his life.

It is safer to offend certain men than it is to oblige them; for as proof that they owe nothing they seek recourse in hatred.

I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes. ... Wretched flocks of maids labor so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body.

Fire proves gold, adversity proves men.