Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man and often makes the most foolish men clever

What men call friendship is no more than a partnership, a mutual care of interests, an exchange of favors - in a word, it is a sort of traffic, in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.

The extreme pleasure we take in speaking of ourselves should make us apprehensive that it gives hardly any to those who listen to us.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.

The best way to rise in society is to use all possible means of persuading people that one has already risen in society.

There are two sorts of constancy in love one arises from continually discovering in the loved person new subjects for love, the other arises from our making a merit of being constant.