Our enemies approach nearer to truth in their judgments of us than we do ourselves.

Gratitude is like credit; it is the backbone of our relations; frequently we pay our debts not because equity demands that we should, but to facilitate future loans.

The happiness or unhappiness of men depends no less upon their dispositions than their fortunes.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

It is easier to appear worthy of positions that we have not got, than of those that we have.

Absence lessens ordinary passions and augments great ones, as the wind blows out a candle and makes a fire blaze.

What causes us to like new acquaintances is not so much weariness of our old ones, or the pleasure of change, as disgust at not being sufficiently admired by those who know us too well, and the hope of being admired more by those who do not know so much about us.

Always we like those who admire us, but we do not always like those whom we admire.

Fortune turns everything to the advantage of those she favours.

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.