Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.

Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.

It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.

Silence is the best tactic for he who distrusts himself.

There is no praise we have not lavished upon prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event.

No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.