It is not enough that we should succeed, but our friends must fail as well.
A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable.
Humility is often merely feigned submissiveness assumed in order to subject others, an artifice of pride which stoops to conquer, and although pride has a thousand ways of transforming itself it is never so well disguised and able to take people in as when masquerading as humility.
Were we faultless, we would not derive such satisfaction from remarking the faults of others.
The reason why most women have so little sense of friendship is that this is but a cold and flat passion to those that have felt that of love.
High fortune makes both our virtues and vices stand out as objects that are brought clearly to view by the light.
The soul's maladies have their relapses like the body's. What we take for a cure is often just a momentary rally or a new form of the disease.
We judge so superficially of things, that common words and actions spoke and done in an agreeable manner, with some knowledge of what passes in the world, often succeed beyond the greatest ability.
If we took as much pains to be what we ought, as we do to deceive others by disguising what we are; we might appear as we are, without being at the trouble of any disguise.
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
There are no events so disastrous that adroit men do not draw some advantage from them, nor any so fortunate that the imprudent cannot turn to their own prejudice.
History never embraces more than a small part of reality
There are some good marriages, but practically no delightful ones.
Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.
There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.
He who lives without committing any folly is not so wise as he thinks. [Fr., Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.]
We sometimes think that we hate flattery, but we only hate the manner in which it is done. [Fr., On croit quelquefoir hair la flatterie; maid on ne hait que a maniere de flatter.]
There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of.
The health of the soul is something we can be no more sure of than that of the body; and though a man may seem far from the passions, yet he is in as much danger of falling into them as one in a perfect state of health of having a fit of sickness.
Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.
The smallest fault of women who give themselves up to love is to love.
Things often offer themselves to our mind in a more finished form in the very first thought, than we might have made them by muchart and study.
Love of glory, fear of shame, greed for fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others - all of these are often the causes of the bravery that is spoken so highly of by men.
Humility is often only feigned submission which people use to render others submissive. It is a subterfuge of pride which lowers itself in order to rise.
When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent.
