There are no events so disastrous that adroit men do not draw some advantage from them, nor any so fortunate that the imprudent cannot turn to their own prejudice.

Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.

The tranquility or agitation of our temper does not depend so much on the big things which happen to us in life, as on the pleasant or unpleasant arrangements of the little things which happen daily.

It is the habit of mediocre minds to condemn all that is beyond their grasp.

People are more slanderous from vanity than from malice.

The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.