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

What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the benefit.

The great interests of man: air and light, the joy of having a body, the voluptuousness of looking.

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

Kings do with men as with pieces of money; they give them what value they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current and not at their real value.

Nothing is given so profusely as advice.

We forgive just so long as we love.