Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony.

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious an…

That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?

The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.

A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.

Happy is he who does not desire a thing.