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

We do not like to praise, and seldom praise anyone without self-interest.

Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.

Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.

Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.

There may be talent without position, but there is no position without some kind of talent.

Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.