We should scarcely desire things ardently if we were perfectly acquainted with what we desire.

We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.

Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things.

Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.

Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us.