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.

We acknowledge our faults in order to repair by our sincerity the damage they have done us in the eyes of others.

We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.

Sometimes a fool has talent, but never judgment.

We are never either so fortunate or so misfortunate as we imagine.

What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.

People are more slanderous from vanity than from malice.