It is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.

Some weak people are so sensible of their weakness as to be able to make a good use of it.

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.

Some people are so extremely whiffling and inconsiderable that they are as far from any real faults as from substantial virtues.

What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.

Love of glory, fear of shame, greed for fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others - all of these are often the causes of the bravery that is spoken so highly of by men.

Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.