Aphorisms

Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man, and often makes the most foolish clever.

He who thinks he can find in himself the means of doing without others is much mistaken; but he who thinks others cannot do without him is still more mistaken.

We should often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world saw all the motives that produce them.

Self-love is cleverer than the cleverest man in the world.

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

Flattery’s the food of fools.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Falsehood flies, and Truth comes limping after it.

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

Patience: a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

Consult: to seek another’s disapproval of a course already decided on.