However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.

The less you trust others, the less you will be deceived.

Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.

There is an excess both in happiness and misery above our power of sensation.

It is easier to understand mankind in general than any individual man.

To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.

The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more.