We are never so happy, nor so unhappy, as we suppose ourselves to be.

Men more easily renounce their interests than their tastes.

What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.

We love everything on our own account; we even follow our own taste and inclination when we prefer our friends to ourselves; and yet it is this preference alone that constitutes true and perfect friendship.

We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.

The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.

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