Usually we praise only to be praised.
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more.
Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.
Criticism sometimes is really praise, and praise sometimes slander.
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.