"Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs"
"Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors"
"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example"
"Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead"
"Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites"
"Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency"
"Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed"
"It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self"
"It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it"
"It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures"
"It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit"
"It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not"
"It is not enough to have great qualities; We should also have the management of them"
"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"
"The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken"
"The intellect is always fooled by the heart"
"The heart is forever making the head its fool"
"The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune"
"That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest"
"Taste may change, but inclination never"
"Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing"
"Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them"
"Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of"
"Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself"
"Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new"
