"It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit."

"In jealousy there is more self - love than love."

"Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind."

"The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice."

"Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye."

"How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?"

"There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices."

"Passion often makes a madman of the cleverest man, and renders the greatest fools clever."

"We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them."

"Timidity is a fault for which it is dangerous to reprove persons whom we wish to correct of it."

"The mind cannot long play the heart's role."

"If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection."

"We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them."

"It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it."

"We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years."

"In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us."

"We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue."

"What causes us to like new acquaintances is not so much weariness of our old ones or the pleasure of change as disgust at not being sufficiently admired by those who know us too well and the hope of being admired more by those who do not know so much about us."

"What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give."

"If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship."

"There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not."

"One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one."

"We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves."

"If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources."

"Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on."

"There are few things we should keenly desire if we really knew what we wanted."

"The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others."

"Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will - power"

"A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others."

"If I advance follow me! If I retreat kill me! If I die avenge me!"

"In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors."

"We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire."

"Hope is the last thing that dies in man."

"The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve."

"It is the prerogative of great men only to have great defects."

"Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, is sometimes of use toward the moderating of it too."

"No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will."

"Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side."

"The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others."

"There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men."

"Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended."

"Innocence finds not near so much protection as guilt."

"There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess."

"Interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of parts even that of disinterestedness."

"What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given."

"We forgive so long as we love."

"The intellect is always fooled by the heart."

"No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so."

"We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears."

"Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed."