It is impossible to love a second time what we have really ceased to love.

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that offer.

Prudence and love are inconsistent; in proportion as the last increases, the other decreases.

Before strongly desiring anything, we should look carefully into the happiness of its present owner.

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.

Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge; and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.

A man, in order to establish himself in the world, does everything he can to appear established there.