Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.

If vanity does not entirely overthrow the virtues, at least it makes them all totter.

A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we want to fully develop the effects they can produce.

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.

We torment ourselves rather to make it appear that we are happy than to become so.

Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.