What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.
The mind cannot long play the heart’s role.
We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.
We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
We say little, when vanity does not make us speak.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul, whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it.
The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.
A man’s worth has its season, like fruit.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.
Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites.
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures.
It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one’s self.
Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.
Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, is sometimes of use toward the moderating of it too.
The greatest part of intimate confidences proceed from a desire either to be pitied or admired.
The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune.
The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice.