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

Perfect courage and utter cowardice are two extremes which rarely occur.

There is a sort of love whose very excessiveness prevents the lover's being jealous.

Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind.

Coquetry is the essential characteristic, and the prevalent humor of women; but they do not all practice it, because the coquetry of some is restrained by fear or by reason.

We are never so generous as when giving advice.

Humility is often only a feigned submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride.