Some people are so extremely whiffling and inconsiderable that they are as far from any real faults as from substantial virtues.

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.

There are some bad qualities which make great talents.

It is the prerogative of great men only to have great defects.

What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the benefit.