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.
Francois de La RochefoucauldWhen we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld