In their early passions women are in love with the lover, later they are in love with love.

Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge; and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.

Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.

The sicknesses of the soul have their ups and downs like those of the body; what we take to be a cure is most often merely a respite or change of disease.

We are much mistaken if we think that men are always brave from a principle of valor, or women chaste from a principle of modesty.

What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.

Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.