If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.

Our errors and our controversies, in the sphere of morality, arise sometimes from looking on men as though they could be altogether bad, or altogether good.

Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame.

The usual pretext of those who make others unhappy is that they do it for their own good.

The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers.

It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish.

You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men.