LindyScroll

When you see any one weeping for grief, either that his son has gone abroad, or that he has suffered in his affairs, take care not to be overcome by the apparent evil; but discriminate, and be ready to say, “What hurts this man is not this occurrence itself,—for another man might not be hurt by it,—but the view he chooses to take of it.” As far as conversation goes, however, do not disdain to accommodate yourself to him, and if need be, to groan with him. Take heed, however, not to groan inwardly too.

Necessity obtains from man whatever it wants.

Obtain and preserve a Reputation. It is the usufruct of fame. It is expensive to obtain a reputation, for it only attaches to distinguished abilities, which are as rare as mediocrities are common. Once obtained, it is easily preserved. It confers many an obligation, but it does more. When it is owing to elevated powers or lofty spheres of action, it rises to a kind of veneration and yields a sort of majesty. But it is only a well-founded reputation that lasts permanently.

What doesn't make a person worse cannot make their life worse either, nor harm them either externally or internally.

My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.

Descartes’ rule never to decide on the slightest truth before it is clearly and distinctly understood is sufficiently grand and correct to extend to the judgment we form of persons.

Feeling must verge on folly before it is genuine; talent must mingle with playfulness before it turns magical.

So obstinately contradictory is man that you cannot compel him to his advantage, yet he yields before everything that forces him to his hurt.

Some young ladies are not sensible of the advantages of a happy disposition, and how beneficial it would be to them to give themselves up to it; they enfeeble these rare and fragile gifts which Heaven has given them by affectation and by bad imitation; their very voice and gait are affected; they fashion their looks, adorn themselves, consult their looking-glasses to see whether they have sufficiently changed their own natural appearance, and take some trouble to make themselves less agreeable.

Again, when Thudippus, on entering the prison and seeing the executioner bruising the hemlock, grew angry and bewailed his hard fate, declaring it not fitting that he should perish with Phocion, “Is it no satisfaction to thee, then,” said Phocion, “that thou art put to death in company with Phocion?” And when one of his friends asked him if he had any message for his son Phocus, “Certainly,” said he; “my message is that he cherish no resentment against the Athenians.”