The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say.

We own up to minor failings, but only so as to convince others that we have no major ones.

The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.

The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object.

Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.

To establish ourselves in the world, we have to do all we can to appear established. To succeed in the world, we do everything we can to appear successful.

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