We forget our faults easily when they are known to ourselves alone.

The more we love, the nearer we are to hate.

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that offer.

The passions of youth are not more dangerous to health than is the lukewarmness of old age.

The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.

What men call friendship is no more than a partnership, a mutual care of interests, an exchange of favors - in a word, it is a sort of traffic, in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.

A man often believes himself leader when he is led; as his mind endeavors to reach one goal, his heart insensibly drags him towards another.