"Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side"
"People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune"
"People always complain about their memories, never about their minds"
"Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever"
"Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised"
"Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us"
"Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect"
"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"
"Only the contemptible fear contempt"
"One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines"
"One forgives to the degree that one loves"
"No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so"
"No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does"
"No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will"
"Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly"
"Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye"
"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"
"Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with"
"Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them"
"Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul, whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it"
"Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love"
"Jealously is always born with love but it does not die with it"
"It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one"
"There are very few things impossible in themselves; and we do not want means to conquer difficulties so much as application and resolution in the use of means"
"There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other"
"There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of"
"There are heroes in evil as well as in good"
"There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade"
"There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess"
"There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do"
"There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness"
"There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices"
"The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice"
"The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices"
"You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one"
"Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation"
"Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?"
"Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person"
"What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several"
"What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given"
"Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended"
"We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all"
"We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them"
"We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them"
"We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done"
"The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her"
"The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune"
"The mind is always the patsy of the heart"
"The mind cannot long play the heart's role"
"Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new"
