Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.

If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure.

We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment.

Women can less easily surmount their coquetry than their passions.

We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.

We are deceived if we think that mind and judgment are two different matters: judgment is but the extent of the light of the mind. This light penetrates to the bottom of matters; it remarks all that can be remarked, and perceives what appears imperceptible. Therefore we must agree that it is the extent of the light in the mind that produces all the effects which we attribute to judgment.

The older a fool is, the worse he is.