We often credit ourselves with vices the reverse of what we have, thus when weak we boast of our obstinacy.
Self-interest speaks all manner of tongues and plays all manner of parts, even that of disinterestedness.
In order to succeed in the world people do their upmost to appear successful.
To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.
A person well satisfied with themselves is seldom satisfied with others, and others, rarely are with them.
There are fine things that are more brilliant when they are unfinished than when finished too much.
We speak little if not egged on by vanity.
Nothing is rarer than real goodness.
Only the great can afford to have great defects.
We forget our faults easily when they are known to ourselves alone.
It is a wearisome disease to preserve health by too strict a regimen.
The mind is always the patsy of the heart.
If it requires great tact to speak to the purpose, it requires no less to know when to be silent.
There are few people who are more often in the wrong than those who cannot endure to be so.
Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.
Nothing ought more to humiliate men who have merited great praise than the care they still take to boast of little things.
The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so.
We cannot possibly imagine the variety of contradictions in every heart.
One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him.
Perfect courage and utter cowardice are two extremes which rarely occur.