“We pardon to the extent that we love.”

The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

In sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.

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

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

To know how to hide one’s ability is great skill.

There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.

Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.

Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.

Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.

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

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.

One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.

I thought it was time to show some of it, to show some of my feelings about things and what I preferred at the time. I prefer them still but not to the extent I did at the time.

The religions of the world must be assessed, not on the basis of their convoluted theologies, but in terms of the extent to which they serve as forces of liberation and empowerment.

Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.

Or maybe we’re all self-conscious to an extent.

I think that would have been useful and it would have helped to some extent.

The extent to which YOU take responsibility over something is the extent to which YOU take control over it.

Most people now seem to treasure anything they value in proportion to the extent that it’s followed about and surrounded by the vulgar public.

To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called “destiny” to maintain grief and horror in the world?