The person giving the advice returns the confidence placed in him with a disinterested eagerness... and he is usually guided only by his own interest or reputation.

There is no praise we have not lavished upon prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event.

The gallantry of the mind consists in agreeable flattery.

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.

The distempers of the soul have their relapses, as many and as dangerous as those of the body; and what we take for a perfect cureis generally either an abatement of the same disease or the changing of that for another.

Whatever ignominy or disgrace we have incurred, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our reputation.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.