We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

He is a truly virtuous man who wishes always to be open to the observation of honest men.

We forget our faults easily when they are known to ourselves alone.

People would never fall in love if they hadn't heard love talked about.

When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.