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

Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.

Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.

Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.

Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.

The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.

Listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be obtained in conversation.