There is a sort of love whose very excessiveness prevents the lover's being jealous.

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.

If one judges love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it would appear to resemble rather hatred than kindness.

History never embraces more than a small part of reality

We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.

Nothing is rarer than true good nature; they who are reputed to have it are generally only pliant or weak.

He who refuses praise the first time that it is offered does so because he would hear it a second time.