Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.

The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, forgotten because it was properly done.

People who climb from one rung of society to another can never do anything simply.

What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.

The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others - existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things.

The wounds of self-love turn incurable when the oxide of self-love gets into them.

The world will avenge itself upon all happiness in which it has no share.