Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us.

It is safer to do most men harm than to do them too much good.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.

The less you trust others, the less you will be deceived.

Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.

There are reproaches which praise, and praises which defame.