Instead of considering that the worst way to persuade or please others is to try thus strongly to please ourselves, and that to listen well and to answer well are some of the greatest charms we can have in conversation.

Flattery is a base coin which is current only through our vanity.

Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.

We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great ones.

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

What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.

In growing old, we become more foolish - and more wise.