We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

Treachery is more often the effect of weakness than of a formed design.

The soul's maladies have their relapses like the body's. What we take for a cure is often just a momentary rally or a new form of the disease.

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.

A weak mind is the only defect out of our power to mend.

The hunger for applause is the source for all conscious literature and heroism

The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her.