There are people who, like new songs, are in vogue only for a time.

We speak little if not egged on by vanity.

Some good qualities are like the senses: Those who are entirely deprived of them can have no notion of them.

Usually we praise only to be praised.

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.

Very few people are acquainted with death. They undergo it, commonly, not so much out of resolution as custom and insensitivity; and most men die because they cannot help it.

The extreme delight we experience in talking about ourselves should warn us that those who listen do not share it.