We need not regard what good a friend has done us, but only his desire to do us good.

It is a very common failing, never to be pleased with our fortune nor displeased with our character.

Instead of taking care to acquaint ourselves with others, we only think of making ourselves known to them. It would be better to listen to other people in order to become enlightened rather than to speak so as to shine in front of them.

It is such a great fault to talk too much that, in business and conversation, if what is good is also brief, it is doubly good, and one gains by brevity what one often loses by an excess of words.

It is sometimes useful to pretend we are deceived, because when we show a deceiving man that we see through his artifices, we only encourage him to increase his deceptions.

Virtue is not always where it seems to be. People sometimes acknowledge favors only to maintain their reputations, and to make themselves more impudently ungrateful for favors that they do not wish to acknowledge.

Good results are sometimes owing to a failure of judgment, because the faculty of judgment often hinders us from undertaking many things which would succeed if carried through without thinking.