When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that offer.

We acknowledge our faults in order to repair by our sincerity the damage they have done us in the eyes of others.

Fancy sets the value on the gifts of fortune.

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

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.

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.