Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

Great men should not have great faults.

Honest people will respect us for our merit: the public, for our luck.

We often are consoled by our want of reason for misfortunes that reason could not have comforted.

Gratitude is like the good faith of traders: it maintains commerce, and we often pay, not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we may more readily find people to trust us.

When fortune surprises us by giving us some great office without having gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy to fill it.

We have not enough strength to follow all our reason.