The mark of extraordinary merit is to see those most envious of it constrained to praise.
Moderation resembles temperance. We are not so unwilling to eat more, as afraid of doing ourselves harm by it.
Penetration has an air of divination; it pleases our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.
Even women are perfect at the outset.
Raillery is more insupportable than wrong; because we have a right to resent injuries, but are ridiculous in being angry at a jest.
The contempt of riches in the philosophers was a concealed desire of revenging on fortune the injustice done to their merit, by despising the good she denied them.
It is praiseworthy even to attempt a great action.
Moderation cannot have the credit of combatiug and subduing ambition, they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and indolence of the soul, as ambition is its activity and ardor.
Beautiful coquettes are quacks of love.
Truth is the foundation and the reason of the perfection of beauty, for of whatever stature a thing may be, it cannot be beautiful-and perfect, unless it be truly what it should be, and possess truly all that it should have.
Good and bad fortune are found severally to visit those who have the most of the one or the other.
Our probity is not less at the mercy of fortune than our property.
The good or the bad fortune of men depends not less upon their own dispositions than upon fortune.
Self-love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them; and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.
The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship; just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion.
Friendship is a traffic wherein self-love always proposes to be the gainer.
We love everything on our own account; we even follow our own taste and inclination when we prefer our friends to ourselves; and yet it is this preference alone that constitutes true and perfect friendship.
Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.
One honor won is a surety for more.
Jealousy is not love, but self-love.