“The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.”

Taste may change, but inclination never.

Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.

The passions are the only orators which always persuade.

Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.

Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.

The mind is always the patsy of the heart.

The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.

There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.

If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.

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

American women were frustrated in just the role of housewife – but they also managed to enlarge it. And they weren’t just housewives, they were community leaders.

It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.

Wait for those unguarded moments. Relax the mood and, like the child dropping off to sleep, the subject often reveals his truest self.

Treat yourself as your own beloved child.

Each role has its own different challenges.

To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

I think that I’m coming off as the biggest alcoholic in the world.

Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it’s the secret to good sex.