The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship; just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion.

A man does not please long when he has only species of wit.

Many young persons believe themselves natural when they are only impolite and coarse.

The violence done us by others is often less painful than that which we do to ourselves.

A clever man reaps some benefit from the worst catastrophe, and a fool can turn even good luck to his disadvantage.

Love, like fire, cannot subsist without constant impulse; it ceases to live from the moment it ceases to hope or to fear.

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.