What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.

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.

The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils, but present evils triumph over it.

Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones; just as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires.