Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit.

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.

When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.

Constancy in love is of two sorts: One is the effect of new excellencies that are always presenting themselves afresh, and attractour affections continually; the other is only from a point of honor, and a taking of pride not to change.

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

Avarice misapprehends itself almost always. There is no passion which more often will miss its aim, nor upon which the present has so much influence to the prejudice of the future.

The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.