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

Envy is destroyed by true friendship, as coquetry by true love.

A weak mind is the only defect out of our power to mend.

To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.

To establish oneself in the world, one does all one can to seem established there already.

Men are not only prone to forget benefits; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.

No accidents are so unlucky [bad] but that the wise may draw some advantage [good] from them.