It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.

Good and bad fortune are found severally to visit those who have the most of the one or the other.

When our hatred is violent, it sinks us even beneath those we hate.

Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones; just as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires.

We sometimes imagine we hate flattery, but we only hate the way we are flattered.

We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.

There is a kind of love, the excess of which forbids jealousy.