Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

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.

Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.

It appears that nature has hid at the bottom of our hearts talents and abilities unknown to us. It is only the passions that have the power of bringing them to light, and sometimes give us views more true and more perfect than art could possibly do.

All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.

We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.