Men are not only prone to forget benefits; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.

We often make use of envenomed praise, that reveals on the rebound, as it were, defects in those praised which we dare not exposeany other way.

To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

Great men should not have great faults.

Great men's honor ought always to be measured by the methods they made use of in attaining it.

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils, but present evils triumph over it.