The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.

Esteem must be founded on preference: to hold everyone in high esteem is to esteem nothing.

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?

I want to be distinguished from the rest; to tell the truth, a friend to all mankind is not a friend for me.

One easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.

The road is long fro the project to its completion.

I believe that two and two are four and that four and four are eight.