Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.

What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honor of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.

There is no accident so unfortunate but wise men will make some advantage of it, nor any so entirely fortunate but fools may turn it to their own prejudice.

Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites.

Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.

The common foible of women who have been handsome is to forget that they are no longer so.

The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.