If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.
Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
Reason alone is insufficient to make us enthusiastic in any matter.
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.
No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
Though men pride themselves on their great actions often they are not the result of any great design but of chance.
Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests.
There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune; it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things; it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourse...
True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures.
As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.
It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved.
We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.
On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.