No one thinks fortune so blind as those she has been least kind to.

Prudence and love are inconsistent; in proportion as the last increases, the other decreases.

There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners.

What we take for high-mindedness is very often no other than ambition well disguised, that scorns means interests, only to pursuegreater.

Taste may change, but inclination never.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship; just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion.