We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.
We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.
Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated; and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.
The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her.
People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.
The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.
No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.
We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.
Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.
Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.
In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.
The desire of talking of ourselves, and showing those faults we do not mind having seen, makes up a good part of our sincerity.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.
Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.
If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could never harm us.
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
Usually we praise only to be praised.
It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
Some people displease with merit, and others’ very faults and defects are pleasing.
When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.
The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.
Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment.
We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
We have no patience with other people’s vanity because it is offensive to our own.
There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites.
We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.
The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.
What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.
However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.
Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.
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