We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love.

Honest people will respect us for our merit: the public, for our luck.

A man, in order to establish himself in the world, does everything he can to appear established there.

We have not strength enough to follow our reason so far as it would carry us.

The desire to be thought clever often prevents a man from becoming so.

Sometimes there are accidents in our lives the skillful extrication from which demands a little folly.

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?