Our distrust of another justifies his deceit.

We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

Sobriety is love of health, or inability to eat much.

Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.

Beautiful coquettes are quacks of love.

The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.

Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily.