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Man's greatest wisdom consists in knowing his own follies.
Wealth does not teach us to transcend the desire for wealth. The possession of many goods does not bring the repose of not desiring them.
Virtue is not always where it seems to be. People sometimes acknowledge favors only to maintain their reputations, and to make themselves more impudently ungrateful for favors that they do not wish to acknowledge.
Even the best-natured people, if uninstructed, are always blind and uncertain. We must take pains to instruct ourselves so that ignorance makes us neither too timid nor too bold.
The shame that comes to us as we see ourselves praised when we are unworthy of it often gives us the occasion to accomplish things that we might never have achieved without such undeserved praise.
Study and research into truth often only serves to make us see by experience our natural ignorance.
We would often rather seem dutiful to others than to succeed in our duties; and often we would rather tell our friends that we have done them good than to do good in actuality.
We nearly always make ourselves masters of those whom we know well, because he who is thoroughly understood is in some sense subject to those who understand him.
The ties of virtue ought to be closer than the ties of blood, since the good man is closer to another good man by their similarity of morals than the son is to his father by their similarity of face.
We judge matters so superficially that ordinary acts and words, done and spoken with some flair and some knowledge of worldly matters, often succeed better than the greatest cleverness.
