Flattery is a base coin which is current only through our vanity.

It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.

It is as common for tastes to change as it is uncommon for traits of character.

We are lazier in our minds than in our bodies.

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.

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.

Humility is the worst form of conceit.