Almost everyone takes pleasure in repaying trifling obligations, very many feel gratitude for those that are moderate; but there is scarcely anyone who is not ungrateful for those that are weighty.

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

Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance.

We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.

All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.