Interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of parts, even that of disinterestedness.
The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others.
To establish oneself in the world, one has to do all one can to appear established.
There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.
True eloquence consists of saying all that should be said, and that only.
We should scarcely desire things ardently if we were perfectly acquainted with what we desire.
True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.
The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.
What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.
I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it.
The greatest part of intimate confidences proceed from a desire either to be pitied or admired.
Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.
One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.