No Friendship Is So Cordial Or So

Avoid, Which Many Grave Men Have Not Done, Words Taken From Sacred Subjects And From Elevated Poetry: These We Have Seen Vilely Prostituted. Avoid Too The Society Of The Barbarians Who Misemploy Them.

Old Trees In Their Living State Are The Only Things That Money Cannot Command.

We Enter Our Studies, And Enjoy A Society Which We Alone Can Bring Together. We Raise No Jealousy By Conversing With One In Preference To Another; We Give No Offence To The Most Illustrious By Questioning Him As Long As We Will, And Leaving Him As Abruptly. Diversity Of Opinion Raises No Tumult In Our Presence: Each Interlocutor Stands Before Us, Speaks Or Is Silent, And We Adjourn Or Decide The Business At Our Leisure.

The Sweetest Souls, Like The Sweetest Flowers, Soon Canker In Cities, And No Purity Is Rarer There Than The Purity Of Delight.

Even The Weakest Disputant Is Made So Conceited By What He Calls Religion, As To Think Himself Wiser Than The Wisest Who Thinks Differently From Him.