I have taken great care not to deride, bewail, or execrate human actions, but to understand them.

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Deus, sive Natura .

To bring aid to everyone in need far surpasses the powers and advantage of a private person. . . . So the case of the poor falls upon society as a whole.

Of Human Bondage.

A vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more easily than their words.

In refusing benefits caution must be used lest we seem to despise or to refuse them for fear of having to repay them in kind.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.