“Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.”

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.

What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.

We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.

Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.

We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.

The heart is forever making the head its fool.

A man’s worth has its season, like fruit.

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.

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

You can’t know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.

Those who try to achieve success without hard work ultimately deceive themselves-or worse-deceive others.

What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to decieve?

And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill.

They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.