We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.

There is great skill in knowing how to conceal one's skill.

Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.

Men are not only prone to forget benefits; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.

The man who leaves a woman best pleased with herself is the one whom she will soonest wish to see.

However great the advantages given us by nature, it is not she alone, but fortune with her, which makes heroes.

The man whom no one pleases is much more unhappy than the man who pleases no one.