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.

The art of using moderate abilities to advantage often brings greater results than actual brilliance

Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.

We are always bored by the very people by whom it is vital not to be bored.

Spiritual health is no more stable than bodily; and though we may seem unaffected by the passions we are just as liable to be carried away by them as to fall ill when in good health.

It is easier to deceive yourself, and to do so unperceived, than to deceive another.

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.