If vanity does not entirely overthrow the virtues, at least it makes them all totter.

We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.

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.

Novelty is to love like bloom to fruit; it gives a luster which is easily effaced, but never returns.

The pleasure of love is in loving; we are happier in the passion we feel than in what we inspire.

It is easier to deceive yourself, and to do so unperceived, than to deceive another.

The passions of youth are not more dangerous to health than is the lukewarmness of old age.