A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we want to fully develop the effects they can produce.

There are some people upon whom their very faults and failings sit gracefully; and there are others whose very excellencies and accomplishments do not become them.

Kings do with men as with pieces of money; they give them what value they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current and not at their real value.

It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.

Taste may change, but inclination never.

Usually we praise only to be praised.

To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.