No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.

It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures.

There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.

Humility is often only feigned submission which people use to render others submissive. It is a subterfuge of pride which lowers itself in order to rise.

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

In love the deceit generally outstrips the distrust.