Only strong natures can really be sweet ones; those that seem sweet are in general only weak, and may easily turn sour.

However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it.

What men call friendship is no more than a partnership, a mutual care of interests, an exchange of favors - in a word, it is a sort of traffic, in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.

Generally speaking, we would make a good bargain by renouncing all the good that people say of us, upon condition they would say no ill.

Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit.

Very few people are acquainted with death. They undergo it, commonly, not so much out of resolution as custom and insensitivity; and most men die because they cannot help it.

For most men the love of justice is only the fear of suffering injustice.