Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on.
If we resist our passions, it is more from their weakness than from our strength.
The passions are the only orators which always persuade.
Reason alone is insufficient to make us enthusiastic in any matter.
We are never so happy or so unhappy as we think.
There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.
We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.
One forgives to the degree that one loves.
One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.
What causes us to like new acquaintances is not so much weariness of our old ones, or the pleasure of change, as disgust at not being sufficiently admired by those who know us too well, and the hope of being admired more by those who do not know so much about us.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests.
If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.
A man's happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny.
Hope is the last thing that dies in man.
The intellect is always fooled by the heart.
We do not wish ardently for what we desire only through reason.
Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.
The virtues and the vices are all put in motion by interest.
