"Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted."

"There are heroes in evil as well as in good."

"Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them."

"We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears."

"All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones."

"Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth."

"Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away."

"Politeness is a desire to be treated politely, and to be esteemed polite oneself."

"When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe."

"87. - Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each other. [A maxim, adds Aimé Martin, 'Which may enter into the code of a vulgar rogue, but one is astonished to find it in a moral treatise.' Yet we have scriptural authority for it: 'Deceiving and being deceived.' - 2 TIM. iii. 13.]"

"Hope deceitful as it is serves at least to lead us to the end of life along an agreeable road."

"Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others."

"That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest."

"Usually we praise only to be praised."

"If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength."

"Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors."

"We have all of us sufficient fortitude to bear the misfortunes of others."

"We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones."

"Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with."

"There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness."

"However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention."

"Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new."

"Jealousy springs more from love of self than from love of another."

"The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech."

"We are often more treacherous through weakness than calculation"

"The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices."

"The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others."

"What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one."

"Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests."

"Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love."

"The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age."

"Happiness is in the taste and not in the things themselves we are happy from possessing what we like not from possessing what others like."

"There are very few things impossible in themselves; and we do not want means to conquer difficulties so much as application and resolution in the use of means."

"Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice."

"There are few chaste women who are not tired of their trade."

"The reason that lovers never weary each other is because they are always talking about themselves."

"It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one."

"We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones."

"There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of."

"The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying."

"The prospect of being pleased tomorrow will never console me for the boredom of today."

"A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter."

"We pardon to the extent that we love."

"A weakling is incapable of sincerity."

"Though men pride themselves on their great actions often they are not the result of any great design but of chance."

"The head is always the dupe of the heart."

"There is nothing men are so generous of as advice."

"Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay."

"We are lazier in our minds than in our bodies."

"When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves it is useless to seek it elsewhere."