Fortune mends more faults in us than ever reason would be able to do.

The most sure method of subjecting yourself to be deceived is to consider yourself more cunning than others.

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.

It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.

If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could never harm us.

We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.