Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.
Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.
We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.
As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.
It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.
What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
We have no patience with other people’s vanity because it is offensive to our own.
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
We always get bored with those whom we bore.
Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.
Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.
People’s personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.
Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.