The soul's maladies have their relapses like the body's. What we take for a cure is often just a momentary rally or a new form of the disease.

The violence we do to ourselves in order to remain faithful to the one we love is hardly better than an act of infidelity.

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.

We have not enough strength to follow all our reason.

The most ingenious men continually pretend to condemn tricking--but this is often done that they may use it more conveniently themselves, when some great occasion or interest offers itself to them.

More men are guilty of treason through weakness than any studied design to betray.

Raillery is more insupportable than wrong; because we have a right to resent injuries, but are ridiculous in being angry at a jest.