We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.

As love increases, prudence diminishes.

We are much mistaken if we think that men are always brave from a principle of valor, or women chaste from a principle of modesty.

L'absence diminue les mediocres passions, et augmente les grandes,comme le vent eteint les bougies, et allume le feu. Absence diminishes commonplace passions, and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire.

A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we want to fully develop the effects they can produce.

However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.

It is easier for a man to be thought fit for an employment that he has not, than for one he stands already possessed of, and is exercising.