No matter what everybody says, ultimately these things can harm us only by the way we react to them.

Solitude terrifies the soul at twenty.

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 live under a prince who is an enemy to fraud, a prince whose eyes penetrate into the heart, and whom all the art of impostors can't deceive.

To find yourself jilted is a blow to your pride. Do your best to forget it and if you don't succeed, at least pretend to.

There is something inexpressibly charming in falling in love and, surely, the whole pleasure lies in the fact that love isn't lasting.

What! Would you make no distinction between hypocrisy and devotion? Would you give them the same names, and respect the mask as you do the face? Would you equate artifice and sincerity? Confound appearance with truth? Regard the phantom as the very person? Value counterfeit as cash?