Hope is the last thing that dies in man.
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
True love is like ghosts which everybody talks about and few have seen.
We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.
It is with true love as it is with ghosts everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.
Happiness is in the taste and not in the things themselves we are happy from possessing what we like not from possessing what others like.
One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.
We pardon to the extent that we love.
Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.
There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.