Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.

One kind of happiness is to know exactly at what point to be miserable.

There are few things we should keenly desire if we really knew what we wanted.

Though confidence is very fine, and makes the future sunny; I want no confidence for mine, I'd rather have the money

There are few people more convinced of their own genius than those who complain of how stupid they are.

As the great ones of this world are unable to bestow health of body or peace of mind, we always pay too high a price for any good they can do.

What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.