We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.

The art of putting into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than is achieved by true merit.

As we grow older, we increase in folly--and in wisdom.

However much we may distrust men's sincerity, we always believe they speak to us more sincerely than to others.

In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.

There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of.

We often make use of envenomed praise, that reveals on the rebound, as it were, defects in those praised which we dare not exposeany other way.