There are good marriages, but there are no delightful ones.

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

The best way to rise in society is to use all possible means of persuading people that one has already risen in society.

The sicknesses of the soul have their ups and downs like those of the body; what we take to be a cure is most often merely a respite or change of disease.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

Love is one and the same in the original; but there are a thousand different copies of it.