Even women are perfect at the outset.

Fancy sets the value on the gifts of fortune.

The confidence which we have in ourselves give birth to much of that, which we have in others.

It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.

Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.

Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.