We always speak well when we manage to be understood.

Cultivated people should be superior to any consideration so sordid as a mercenary interest.

The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?

We ought always to conform to the manners of the greater number, and so behave as not to draw attention to ourselves. Excess either way shocks, and every man truly wise ought to attend to this in his dress as well as language, never to be affected in anything and follow without being in too great haste the changes of fashion.

Isn't the greatest rule of all the rules simply to please?

Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths.

One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.