Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.

Whatever discoveries have been made in the region of self-love, there remain many uncharted territories there.

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.

Interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of characters; even that of disinterestedness.

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that at last we are disguised to ourselves.

Passions are the only orators that always convince; they are like an art of nature that never fails.

The head is always the dupe of the heart.

We would often be ashamed of our best actions if the world only saw all the motives which produced them.

Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as streams lose themselves in the sea.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.

We easily forget our faults when they are only known to ourselves.

If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting them in others.

Self-love increases or diminishes the good qualities of our friends in proportion to the satisfaction we receive from them.

We are never so happy or so unhappy as we imagine.

Nothing is given so profusely as advice.

Old men love to give good advice to console themselves for no longer being able to set bad examples.

Pride has a greater share than goodness of heart in our reprimands to those who commit faults.

We reprimand others not so much to correct their errors as to persuade them that we are exempt from them.

True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.

Humility is often only a feigned submission, which we use to bend others to our will; it is an artifice of pride.

Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.

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

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not speak of ourselves at all.

Flattery is a counterfeit currency which only circulates through our vanity.

It is as easy to deceive oneself without perceiving it as it is difficult to deceive others without being found out.

A man who finds no satisfaction in himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere.

Pride does not wish to owe, and vanity does not wish to pay.

We are never so easily deceived as when we think we are deceiving others.

It takes greater virtues to bear good fortune than bad.

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they used to acquire it.

A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.

The desire to appear clever often prevents us from becoming so.

True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.

Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he has the strength to be bad: all other goodness is most often only sloth or lack of will.

Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.

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

We forgive so long as we love.

There is in the human heart a perpetual generation of passions; so that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.

The duration of our passions depends no more upon ourselves than does the duration of our lives.

Passions often engender their opposites: avarice sometimes produces prodigality, and prodigality avarice; one is often firm from weakness, and daring from timidity.

We have more strength than will; and it is often to excuse ourselves in our own eyes that we fancy things are impossible.

If we had no weaknesses, we should not take so much pleasure in observing those of other men.

Jealousy is in some sort just and reasonable, since it tends only to preserve a good which belongs to us, or which we think belongs to us; whereas envy is a fury which cannot endure the good of others.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

There is more self-love than love in jealousy.

We are ashamed of having been deceived by our enemies and betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content to be so by ourselves.

Grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind.

True friendship proves itself not in sharing happiness, but in sharing the burdens of sorrow without resentment.

The greatest effort of friendship is not to show our own faults to a friend, but to let him see his own.

We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.

Gratitude is with most people only a strong secret desire to receive greater benefits.

Almost all the world takes pleasure in paying small debts; many show gratitude for moderate benefits; but almost everyone is ungrateful for immense ones.

Pity is often a perception of our own misfortunes in those of other people; it is a clever foresight of the evils into which we may fall.

Constancy in love is an eternal inconstancy, which causes our heart to attach itself successively to all the qualities of the person we love.

It is easier to be wise for others than for oneself.

Self-love is the love of self, and of all things for self; it makes men idolaters of themselves, and tyrants to others if fortune gives them the power.

There are reproaches that praise, and praises that slander.

A wise man benefits more from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

True courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing before all the world.

Intrepidity is an extraordinary strength of soul that raises it above the troubles, disorders, and emotions which the sight of great dangers produces.

Most men expose themselves to danger enough in war to save their honor, but few are willing to expose themselves as much as the success of the enterprise requires.

Fortune turns everything to the advantage of her favorites.

Fortune and caprice govern the world.

Nature creates ability; fortune brings it into play.

We should often be sorry if our wishes were granted.

Moderation has been made a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console mediocre people for their lack of fortune and merit.

Moderation in good fortune is only apprehension of the shame that attends upon intoxication with success.

The calm or agitation of our temper does not depend so much on the vast affairs of life as on a commodious or disagreeable arrangement of little things.

Few people have the wisdom to prefer blame that is useful to them over praise that betrays them.

We are never so ridiculous through the qualities we have as through those we pretend to have.

A genuine man is not one who boasts of virtues, but one who is never surprised to discover his own weaknesses.

The supreme mastery of life is to recognize our own illusions before they crush us.

We are more easily governed through our vices than through our virtues.

To know a man, observe what he does when he thinks no one sees him.

He who thinks he can find in himself the means of doing without all men is much mistaken; but he who thinks that men cannot do without him is still more mistaken.

There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they had no good qualities at all.

Magnanimity despises everything in order to obtain everything.

The most subtle folly is produced by the most subtle wisdom.

Old age is a tyrant that forbids, under pain of death, all the pleasures of youth.

Few people know how to be old.

The passions of youth are not more contrary to salvation than the lukewarmness of old age.

It is more necessary to study men than books.

The great flaw of penetration is not that it fails to reach the point, but that it goes past it.

To be too much dissatisfied with oneself is a weakness; to be too much satisfied with oneself is a stupidity.

We confess our faults in order to repair by our sincerity the damage they have done us in the opinion of others.

The pleasure of love is in loving, and we are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire.

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

Most women weep for their lovers not because they loved them so well, but to appear more worthy of being loved.

We should gain more by letting ourselves be seen as we are than by attempting to appear what we are not.

Truth does not do so much good in the world as its appearance does evil.

Nothing prevents us from being natural so much as the desire to appear so.

Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.

We take more pains to persuade others that we are happy than we do in trying to be so ourselves.

It is easier to appear worthy of the positions one does not hold than of those one does.

Fate never seems so blind as in the eyes of those whom she does not favor.

The intellect is always the dupe of the heart; when vanity whispers, reason obeys.

To love truth with all one's soul requires having unmasked every comforting lie of the ego.

The ultimate wisdom is to see the human comedy with gentle eyes, knowing that our own heart plays its part upon the stage.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

What you seek is seeking you.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.