We are forced to respect the gifts of nature, which study and fortune cannot give.
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.
Is it against justice or reason to love ourselves? And why is self-love always a vice?
Hope deceives more men than cunning does.
We often quarrel with the unfortunate to get rid of pitying them.
Men sometimes feel injured by praise because it assigns a limit to their merit; few people are modest enough not to take offense that one appreciates them.