A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less chargeable with ingratitude than his benefactor is.

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.

Jealousy is the greatest of all evils, and the one that arouses the least pity in the person who causes it.

Those great and glorious actions that dazzle our eyes with their luster are represented by statesmen as the result of great wisdomand excellent design; whereas, in truth, they are commonly the effects of the humors and passions.

What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.

Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.

There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.