We should scarcely desire things ardently if we were perfectly acquainted with what we desire.
When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
A man's happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.
Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.
Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved...
What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involve...
What causes us to like new acquaintances is not so much weariness of our old ones or the pleasure of change as disgust at not being sufficiently admired by those who know us too well and the hope o...
What men call friendship is no more than a partnership a mutual care of interests an exchange of favors - in a word it is a sort of traffic in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.
Few things are impracticable in themselves and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.
Nothing is so contagious as example and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.
It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.