Nature creates ability; luck provides it with opportunity.

Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us.

There may be talent without position, but there is no position without some kind of talent.

To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.

It is impossible to love a second time what we have really ceased to love.

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

Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.