“The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.”

If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.

Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?

We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.

It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.

If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.

The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.

When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.

If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.

Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.

Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.

Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.

All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.

Hung it on each side with curious organs of sense, given it airs and graces that cannot be described, and surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light.

A sadder but wiser man is a thousand times more agreeable to meet than the feller that never makes a mistake.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

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

A true disciple inquires not whether a fact is agreeable to his own reason.

You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal.