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

We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.

It is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.

We are much mistaken if we think that men are always brave from a principle of valor, or women chaste from a principle of modesty.

We often see malefactors, when they are led to execution, put on resolution and a contempt of death which, in truth, is nothing else but fearing to look it in the face--so that this pretended bravery may very truly be said to do the same good office to their mind that the blindfold does to their eyes.

Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away.

The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.