What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.

That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.

Politeness of the mind is to have delicate thoughts

That which makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is that which wounds our own.

The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune.

We do not praise others, ordinarily, but in order to be praised ourselves.