What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honor of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.

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

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

Fortune never appears so blind as to those to whom she does no good.

Women know not the whole of their coquetry.

How can we be answerable for what we shall want in the future, since we have no clear idea of what we want now?

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.