"Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person."

"Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected."

"Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?"

"He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks."

"A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win."

"Boredom ... causes us to neglect more duties than does interest."

"To establish oneself in the world one has to do all one can to appear established."

"Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency."

"We are almost always bored by just those whom we must not find boring."

"It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone."

"We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves."

"The desire of talking of ourselves, and showing those faults we do not mind having seen, makes up a good part of our sincerity."

"Jealously is always born with love but it does not die with it."

"We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all."

"One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines."

"It is as proper to have pride in oneself as it is ridiculous to show it to others."

"No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does."

"We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish."

"Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness."

"In love we often doubt what we most believe."

"The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune."

"He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it."

"It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not."

"It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated; and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend."

"We are oftener treacherous through weakness than through calculation."

"Moderation is an ostentatious proof of our strength of character."

"We do not wish ardently for what we desire only through reason."

"In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another."

"Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural."

"Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring."

"There are more defects in temperament than in the mind."

"We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them."

"What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love."

"You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one."

"The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest."

"The passions are the only orators which always persuade."

"We are very far from always knowing our own wishes."

"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example."

"Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world."

"People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not."

"It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self."

"True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary and nothing but what is necessary."

"Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind."

"Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example."

"Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does."

"Before strongly desiring anything we should look carefully into the happiness of its present owner."

"Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference."

"What men call friendship is no more than a partnership a mutual care of interests an exchange of favors - in a word it is a sort of traffic in which self - love ever proposes to be the gainer."

"The greatest part of intimate confidences proceed from a desire either to be pitied or admired."

"What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several."