The extreme delight we experience in talking about ourselves should warn us that those who listen do not share it.

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

If you cannot find peace in yourself, it is useless to look for it elsewhere.

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.

There are certain people fated to be fools; they not only commit follies by choice, but are even constrained to do so by fortune.

In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance.

Smallness of mind is the cause of stubbornness, and we do not credit readily what is beyond our view.