"There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do."

"What is perfectly true is perfectly witty."

"There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade."

"Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us."

"A man who finds no satisfaction in himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere."

"The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune."

"The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her."

"We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore."

"We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves."

"Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love."

"Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit."

"People always complain about their memories, never about their minds."

"We should scarcely desire things ardently if we were perfectly acquainted with what we desire."

"It is much easier to extinguish a first desire than to satisfy all of those that follow it."

"Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name."

"One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger."

"There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune; it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things; it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves."

"One forgives to the degree that one loves."

"Only the contemptible fear contempt."

"It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular."

"Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue."

"We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others."

"True eloquence consists of saying all that should be said and that only."

"It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures."

"We seldom praise anyone in good earnest, except such as admire us."

"It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them."

"Weak people cannot be sincere."

"Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them."

"A man's worth has its season, like fruit."

"I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it."

"In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances."

"As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing."

"True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world."

"Extreme boredom provides its own antidote."

"Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom."

"When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them."

"There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations."

"A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant."

"Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly."

"Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it."

"The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices."

"The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again."

"Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy."

"We say little, when vanity does not make us speak."

"The force we use on ourselves, to prevent ourselves from loving, is often more cruel than the severest treatment at the hands of one loved."

"True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen."

"Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing."

"How rare true love maybe, it is less so than true friendship."

"We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves."

"Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance."