Few things are needful to make the wise man happy, but nothing satisfies the fool; - and this is the reason why so many of mankind are miserable.

What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?

What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind.

Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.

Avarice is more opposite to economy than liberality.