To establish yourself in the world a person must do all they can to appear already established.

Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.

Even women are perfect at the outset.

Those who most obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want back seats.

Without humility, we keep all our defects; and they are only crusted over by pride, which conceals them from others, and often from ourselves.

We often credit ourselves with vices the reverse of what we have, thus when weak we boast of our obstinacy.

The soul's maladies have their relapses like the body's. What we take for a cure is often just a momentary rally or a new form of the disease.