If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.

Plenty of people want to be pious, but no one yearns to be humble.

It is much easier to seem fitted for posts we do not fill than for those we do.

The most subtle of our acts is to simulate blindness for snares that we know are set for us.

One kind of flirtation is to boast we never flirt.

Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.

Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides.