If we judge of love by its usual effects, it resembles hatred more than friendship.
If we resist our passions, it is more through their weakness than from our strength.
If we had no faults of our own, we should not take half so much satisfaction in observing those of other people.
Lovers never get tired of each other because they are forever talking about themselves.
Self-love is the greatest flatterer in the world.
Old people love to give good advice to console themselves for no longer being able to set a bad example.
Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.
There is hardly a man clever enough to recognize the full extent of the evil he does.
Live on doubts; it becomes madness or stops entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
Passions are the only orators to always convinces us.
It is great cleverness to know how to conceal our cleverness.
It is for want of application, rather than of means that people fail,
It is more easy to be wise for others than for ourselves.
It is more shameful to mistrust one's friends than to be deceived by them
Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.
There are few people who are not ashamed of their love affairs when the infatuation is over.
There are ways which lead to everything, and if we have sufficient will we should always have sufficient means.
There is no disguise that can for long conceal love where it exists or simulate it where it does not.
We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.
We are never so ridiculous by the qualities we have, as by those we affect to have.
We often do good in order that we may do evil with impunity.
When our hatred is too bitter it places us below those whom we hate.
We should often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives behind them.
True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
We would rather speak badly of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.
When we cannot find contentment in ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy, in which the heart attaches itself successively to each of the lover's qualities, giving preference now to one, now to another.
We seldom find people ungrateful so long as we are in a condition to render them service.
The struggle we undergo to remain faithful to one we love is little better than infidelity.
We love those who admire us, but not those whom we admire.
We always love those that admire us, but we do not always love those we admire.
We credit scarcely any persons with good sense except those who are of our opinion.
Fights would not last, if only one side was wrong
Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure, which is useful, to praise which deceives them.
Quarrels would not last so long if the fault lay only on one side.
Our enemies approach nearer to truth in their judgments of us than we do ourselves.
Why is our memory good enough to recall to the last detail things that have happened to us, yet not good enough to recall how often we have told them to the same person.
The passions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.
In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.
If we are to judge of love by the consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
Everyone complains of the badness of his memory, but nobody of his judgment.
Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire to seem so.
Nothing is so contagious as an example. We never do great good or evil without bringing about more of the same on the part of others.
Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.
Absence weakens mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and kindles fires.
The fame of great men ought to be judged always by the means they used to acquire it.
Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it.
How can we accept another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves.
The happiness or unhappiness of men depends as much on their humors as on fortune.
The height of cleverness is being able to conceal it.
The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others.
Too great a hurry to discharge an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
When a man finds no peace within himself, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
The most certain sign of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy
How ever a brilliant an action, it should not be viewed as great unless it is the result of a great motive.
The love of justice in most men is simply the fear of suffering injustice.
