"If it requires great tact to speak to the purpose, it requires no less to know when to be silent."

"Everyone complains of the badness of his memory, but nobody of his judgment."

"Chance corrects us of many faults that reason would not know how to correct."

"Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of a great design as of chance."

"The height of ability in the least able consists in knowing how to submit to the good leadership of others."

"Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed."

"When a man finds no peace within himself, it is useless to seek it elsewhere."

"The common foible of women who have been handsome is to forget that they are no longer so."

"Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible."

"Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay."

"When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time."

"A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice."

"When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes."

"Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new."

"What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give."

"What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them."

"What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several."

"We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all."

"We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them."

"We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done."

"We seldom praise anyone in good earnest, except such as admire us."

"We seldom find people ungrateful so long as we are in a condition to render them service."

"We say little, when vanity does not make us speak."

"We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears."