Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.

Love is one and the same in the original; but there are a thousand different copies of it.

The less you trust others, the less you will be deceived.

Selfishness is the grand moving principle of nine-tenths of our actions.

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

It is necessary, in order to know things well, to know the particulars of them; and these, being infinite, make our knowledge eversuperficial and imperfect.

The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.