Customary use of artifice is the sign of a small mind, and it almost always happens that he who uses it to cover one spot uncovers himself in another.
We acknowledge our faults in order to repair by our sincerity the damage they have done us in the eyes of others.
Our distrust justifies the deceit of others.
Nothing is so contagious as example.
Envy is destroyed by true friendship, as coquetry by true love.
We arrive at the various stages of life quite as novices.
Fortunate persons hardly ever amend their ways: they always imagine that they are in the right when fortune upholds their bad conduct.
Fortune never appears so blind as to those to whom she does no good.
Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.
We are better pleased to see those on whom we confer benefits than those from whom we receive them.
Gratitude is like credit; it is the backbone of our relations; frequently we pay our debts not because equity demands that we should, but to facilitate future loans.
To be a great man it is necessary to know how to profit by the whole of our good fortune.
However great the advantages given us by nature, it is not she alone, but fortune with her, which makes heroes.
Happy people rarely correct their faults; they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways.
It is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is unbearable to be indebted to a scoundrel.
Humility is often only feigned submission which people use to render others submissive. It is a subterfuge of pride which lowers itself in order to rise.
The world is full of pots jeering at kettles.
It is impossible to love a second time what we have really ceased to love.
In love deceit nearly always goes further than mistrust.
Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit.