Indolence, languid as it is, often masters both passions and virtues.
There are some faults which, when well managed, make a greater figure than virtue itself.
Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.
Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.
There are certain defects which, well-mounted, glitter like virtue itself.
The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.
Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.
It requires greater virtues to support good fortune than bad.
To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.
If vanity does not entirely overthrow the virtues, at least it makes them all totter.
Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.
What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.
Virtue would not make such advances if there were not a little vanity to keep it company.
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.
It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.
When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.
We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
Virtue is to the soul what health is tot he body.
It is not always for virtue's sake that women are virtuous.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.
Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.
