“It is our conscience, not our pride, that has put doorkeepers at our doors.”

“No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours.”

“We are indeed apt to ascribe certain faults to the place or to the time; but those faults will follow us, no matter how we change our place.”

“We should conduct ourselves not as if we ought to live for the body, but as if we could not live without it. Our too great love for it makes us restless with fears, burdens us with cares, and exposes us to insults.”

“We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.”

“Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets just like love or liquor.”

“Men whose spirit has grown arrogant from the great favor of fortune have this most serious fault—those whom they have injured they also hate.”