The most sure method of subjecting yourself to be deceived is to consider yourself more cunning than others.

Nothing is so contagious as example; never was there any considerable good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and had ones through a malignity in our nature, which shame conceals, and example sets at liberty.

Happy people rarely correct their faults; they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways.

There are follies as catching as contagious disorders.

Taste may change, but inclination never.

Some good qualities are like the senses: Those who are entirely deprived of them can have no notion of them.

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.