Fame, they tell you, is air; but without air there is no life for any; without fame there is none for the best.

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.

A true philosopher is beyond the reach of fortune.

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for never is life so low or so little as when occupied with the present.

Ridicule has followed the vestiges of truth, but never usurped her place.

I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.