The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.

The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

The most subtle of our acts is to simulate blindness for snares that we know are set for us.

There are two sorts of constancy in love one arises from continually discovering in the loved person new subjects for love, the other arises from our making a merit of being constant.

We own up to minor failings, but only so as to convince others that we have no major ones.

For the credit of virtue we must admit that the greatest misfortunes of men are those into which they fall through their crimes.