It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.

Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us.

The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so.

Jealousy is the greatest of all evils, and the one that arouses the least pity in the person who causes it.

Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.

None but great men are capable of having great flaws.

Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.