What men call friendship is no more than a partnership, a mutual care of interests, an exchange of favors - in a word, it is a sort of traffic, in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.

Love's greatest miracle is the curing of coquetry.

History never embraces more than a small part of reality

Folly pursues us at all periods of our lives. If someone seems wise it is only because his follies are proportionate to his age and fortune.

In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.

Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.

It takes more strength of character to withstand good fortune than bad.