What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.

Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.

Generally speaking, we would make a good bargain by renouncing all the good that people say of us, upon condition they would say no ill.

There is a sort of love whose very excessiveness prevents the lover's being jealous.

The extreme pleasure we take in speaking of ourselves should make us apprehensive that it gives hardly any to those who listen to us.

Gratitude, in most men, is only a strong and secret hope of greater favors.

The reason we bitterly hate those who deceive us is because they think they are cleverer than we are.