If it requires great tact to speak to the purpose, it requires no less to know when to be silent.

One kind of happiness is to know exactly at what point to be miserable.

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.

The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.