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?
Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.
When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.
When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.
When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.
When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.
We seldom praise anyone in good earnest, except such as admire us.
Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new.
We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.
What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.
Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.