“The sure way to be cheated is to think one’s self more cunning than 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.

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can’t quite name.

The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.

We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.

Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.

Usually we praise only to be praised.

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.