It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

The common foible of women who have been handsome is to forget that they are no longer so.

Jealousy is in some measure just and reasonable, since it merely aims at keeping something that belongs to us or we think belongsto us, whereas envy is a frenzy that cannot bear anything that belongs to others.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from beauty, that it consists in a symmetry of which we know not the rules, and a secret conformity of the features to each other, as also to the air and complexion of the person.

People would not long remain in social life if they were not the dupes of each other.