We are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.

Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.

We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.

If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.

Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.