Unfaithfulness ought to extinguish love, and we should not be jealous when there is reason to be. Only those who give no grounds for jealousy are worthy of it.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. [However disappointment can always be removed if we remember it could have turned out worse.]

There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.

The truest mark of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy.

Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

There is merit without rank, but there is no rank without some merit.