It is a very trying task for deceitful people, always to have to cover up their lack of sincerity and to repair the breaking of their word.

It is neither a great praise nor a great blame when people say a tendency is in or out of fashion. If a tendency is as it should be at one time, it is always as it should be.

Love is always master everywhere. It shapes the soul, the heart, and the mind wherever it exists. What matters is not the amount of love, but simply its existence in the mind and heart where it resides. And it truly appears that love is to the soul of the lover as the soul itself is to the body which it animates.

When people reproach us, they only increase their own failings even as they are disclaiming them.

When High and Mighty people want to make us believe that they possess some good quality which they in fact do not have, it is dangerous to show that you doubt them; because, by removing their hope of deceiving the world, you also remove their desire to perform the good acts that might have arisen from their very pretensions.

There is no more reason to accuse ourselves excessively of our failings than to excuse them overmuch. He who goes overboard in self-criticism often does so in order not to suffer others' criticisms, or else does so out of a kind of vanity that wishes to make others believe that he knows how to confess his faults.

We think highly of men when we do not know the extent of their capabilities, for we always suppose that more exists when we only see half.