All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ, they all aim at the same end.

Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.

We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.

All men naturally hate one another. I hold it a fact, that if men knew exactly what one says of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.

The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.