Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.

Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit.

No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

The desire of talking of ourselves, and showing those faults we do not mind having seen, makes up a good part of our sincerity.

Death, like the sun, cannot be looked at steadily.

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.