People are more slanderous from vanity than from malice.

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?

Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.

The breeding we give young people is ordinarily but an additional self-love, by which we make them have a better opinion of themselves.

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.

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

In friendship, as in love, we are often more happy from the things we are ignorant of than from those we are acquainted with.