Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides.
Treachery is more often the effect of weakness than of a formed design.
Great men's honor ought always to be measured by the methods they made use of in attaining it.
Fortune makes our virtues and vices visible, just as light does the objects of sight.
Virtue would not make such advances if there were not a little vanity to keep it company.
Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers in the sea.
To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.
The temperament that produces a talent for little things is the opposite of that required for great ones.
Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect than when they have been too perfectly crafted.
We would rather see those to whom we do good, than those who do good to us.
The truest mark of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy.
If we did not have pride, we would not complain of it in others.
The measure of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.
Our enemies' opinion of us comes closer to the truth than our own.
It's easier to know people in general than one person in particular
We never desire strongly, what we desire rationally.
We pardon as long as we love.
The greatest miracle of love is the cure of coquetry.
It seems that nature, which has so wisely disposed our bodily organs with a view to our happiness, has also bestowed on us pride, to spare us the pain of being aware of our imperfections.
To establish yourself in the world a person must do all they can to appear already established.
It is not always from valor or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.
What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honor of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.
It appears that nature has hid at the bottom of our hearts talents and abilities unknown to us. It is only the passions that have the power of bringing them to light, and sometimes give us views more true and more perfect than art could possibly do.
When fortune surprises us by giving us some great office without having gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy to fill it.
The greater part of mankind judge of men only by their fashionableness or their fortune.
