When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.

We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.

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.

We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.

The judgments our enemies make about us come nearer to the truth than those we make about ourselves.

A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we want to fully develop the effects they can produce.

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.