We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.

Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.

The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so.

Weak people cannot be sincere.

The appearances of goodness and merit often meet with a greater reward from the world than goodness and merit themselves.

The violence we do to ourselves in order to remain faithful to the one we love is hardly better than an act of infidelity.

All women are flirts, but some are restrained by shyness, and others by sense.