The daily employment of cunning marks a little mind, it generally happens that those who resort to it in one respect to protect themselves lay themselves open to attack in another.

Truth does not do as much good in the world as its imitations do harm.

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.

We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great ones.

Gratitude is like the good faith of traders: it maintains commerce, and we often pay, not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we may more readily find people to trust us.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

Happiness does not consist in things themselves but in the relish we have of them.