The heart is forever making the head its fool.

The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.

In love deceit nearly always goes further than mistrust.

It seems that nature, which has so wisely disposed our bodily organs with a view to our happiness, has also bestowed on us pride, to spare us the pain of being aware of our imperfections.

What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

Flattery is a counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no circulation.

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.