The judgments our enemies make about us come nearer to the truth than those we make about ourselves.

A man, in order to establish himself in the world, does everything he can to appear established there.

The man whom no one pleases is much more unhappy than the man who pleases no one.

Vices are ingredients of virtues just as poisons are ingredients of remedies. Prudence mixes and tempers them and uses them effectively against life's ills.

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.

What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

Those who most obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want back seats.