Honest people will respect us for our merit: the public, for our luck.

We sometimes imagine we hate flattery, but we only hate the way we are flattered.

Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.

Time's chariot-wheels make their carriage-road in the fairest face.

We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.

Some men are like ballads, that are in everyone's mouth a little while.

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.