The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.
One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions i have, but in my lack of control of them.
It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.