A resolution never to deceive exposes a man to be often deceived.
If one judges love by the majority of its effects, it is more like hatred than like friendship.
We easily forget our faults when no one knows them but ourselves.
Men are not only prone to forget benefits; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.
To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.
Our minds are as much given to laziness as our bodies.
When our hatred is too alive puts us below what we hate.
The pleasure of love is in the loving; and there is more joy in the passion one feels than in that which one inspires.
A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we want to fully develop the effects they can produce.
The better part of one's life consists of his friendships. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, letter to Joseph Gillespie, July 13, 1849 Friendship is insipid to those who have experienced love.
None deserve praise for being good who have not the spirit to be bad: goodness, for the most part, is nothing but indolence or weakness of will.
There are certain defects which, well-mounted, glitter like virtue itself.
Hope, deceitful as it is, carries us through life agreeably enough.
It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated; and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.
A man cannot please long who has only one kind of wit.
Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
We always get bored with those whom we bore.
Our temper sets a price upon every gift that we receive from fortune.
It is most difficult to speak when we are ashamed of being silent.
Some reproaches praise; some praises reproach.
Civility is a desire to receive civilities, and to be accounted well-bred.
Nothing is rarer than true good nature; they who are reputed to have it are generally only pliant or weak.
To praise great actions is in some sense to share them.
The gallantry of the mind consists in agreeable flattery.
