The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.

To establish ourselves in the world, we have to do all we can to appear established. To succeed in the world, we do everything we can to appear successful.

There is a kind of love, the excess of which forbids jealousy.

The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally tobe nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.

To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.

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

The gallantry of the mind consists in agreeable flattery.