You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.
We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.
We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.
In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances.
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
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.
In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.
We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.
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.
Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.
Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
There are very few things impossible in themselves; and we do not want means to conquer difficulties so much as application and resolution in the use of means.
They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.
We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.