People Are More Slanderous From Vanity Than

Those Who Are Condemned To Death Affect Sometimes A Constancy And Contempt For Death Which Is Only The Fear Of Facing It; So That One May Say That This Constancy And Contempt Are To Their Mind What The Bandage Is To Their Eyes.

Nothing Ought In Reason To Mortify Our Self-satisfaction More That The Considering That We Condemn At One Time What We Highly Approve And Commend At Another.

We Often Credit Ourselves With Vices The Reverse Of What We Have, Thus When Weak We Boast Of Our Obstinacy.

Virtues Lose Themselves In Self-interest, As Rivers In The Sea.

Of All Our Faults, The One We Avow Most Easily Is Idleness; We Persuade Ourselves That It Is Allied To All The Peaceable Virtues,and As For The Others, That It Does Not Destroy Them Utterly, But Only Suspends The Exercise Of Their Functions.