The same strength of character which helps a man resist love, helps to make it more violent and lasting too. People of unsettled minds are always driven about with passions, but never absolutely filled with any.

Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.

There may be talent without position, but there is no position without some kind of talent.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.

We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.

In love the deceit generally outstrips the distrust.

He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.