Plenty of people want to be pious, but no one yearns to be humble.
Tricks and treachery are merely proofs of lack of skill.
We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.
Gratitude is a lively sense of benefits to come.
There are many predicaments in life that one must be a bit crazy to escape from.
Humility is the worst form of conceit.
It is not enough that we should succeed, but our friends must fail as well.
We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves.
One kind of happiness is to know exactly at what point to be miserable.
To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself.
Only strong natures can really be sweet ones; those that seem sweet are in general only weak, and may easily turn sour.
If it were not for poetry, few men would ever fall in love.
We own up to minor failings, but only so as to convince others that we have no major ones.
We make promises to the extent that we hope-and keep them to the extent that we fear.
Preserving the serious health condition is usually painful.
It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.
Jealousy is nothing more than a fear of abandonment.
The great interests of man: air and light, the joy of having a body, the voluptuousness of looking.
The more we love, the nearer we are to hate.
To establish ourselves in the world, we have to do all we can to appear established. To succeed in the world, we do everything we can to appear successful.