A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

The distempers of the soul have their relapses, as many and as dangerous as those of the body; and what we take for a perfect cureis generally either an abatement of the same disease or the changing of that for another.

We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.

Envy is destroyed by true friendship, as coquetry by true love.

The only good copies are those which make us see the absurdity of bad originals.

We frequently do good in order to enable us to do evil later with impunity exemption of punishment.

Fortune makes our virtues and vices visible, just as light does the objects of sight.