The highest skill is the true judgment of values.

Nothing is given so willingly as advice.

Young women that would not be thought coquettish, and old men that would not be ridiculous, should never talk of love, as if they had any concern in it.

What men have given the name of friendship to is nothing but an alliance, a reciprocal accommodation of interest, an exchange of good offices; in it is nothing but a system of traffic, in which self-love always proposes to itself some advantage.

However different men's fortunes may be, there is always something or other that balances the ill and the good, and makes all even at last.

The most trying fools are the bright ones.

The disabusing a man strongly possessed with an opinion of his own worth is the very same ill office that was done to the fool at Athens, who fancied all the ships that came into the harbor were his own.