The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.

The height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value of things, and of the genius of the age in which we live.

There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing.

Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.

It is the habit of mediocre minds to condemn all that is beyond their grasp.