We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment.

What we cut off from our other faults is very often but so much added to our pride.

Men are not only prone to forget benefits; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.

Fortunate persons hardly ever amend their ways: they always imagine that they are in the right when fortune upholds their bad conduct.

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.

Hope and fear are inseparable. There is no hope without fear, nor any fear without hope.

In infants, levity is a prettiness; in men a shameful defect; but in old age, a monstrous folly.