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22.—Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.
38.—We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears.
70.—There is no disguise which can long hide love where it exists, nor feign it where it does not.
84.—It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends.
85.—We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.
93.—Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.
109.—Youth changes its tastes by the warmth of its blood, age retains its tastes by habit.
119.—We become so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that at last we are disguised to ourselves.
132.—It is far easier to be wise for others than to be so for oneself. [Hence the proverb, "A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client."]
136.—There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of.
192.—When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves with the idea we have left them.
195.—The reason which often prevents us abandoning a single vice is having so many.
200.—Virtue would not go far did not vanity escort her.
262.—There is no passion wherein self-love reigns so powerfully as in love, and one is always more ready to sacrifice the peace of the loved one than his own.
269.—No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
276.—Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire.
284.—There are wicked people who would be much less dangerous if they were wholly without goodness.
329.—We believe, sometimes, that we hate flattery —we only dislike the method.
["To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship which illumine only the track it has passed."— Coleridge.]
440.—The cause why the majority of women are so little given to friendship is, that it is insipid after having felt love.
471.—In their first passion women love their lovers, in all the others they love love.
V.—Everybody finds that to abuse in another which he finds worthy of abuse in himself.
XXXVIII.—The pomp of funerals concerns rather the vanity of the living, than the honour of the dead.
LII.—There are fine things which are more brilliant when unfinished than when finished too much.
LXII.—The most just comparison of love is that of a fever, and we have no power over either, as to its violence or its duration. (1665,
LXXXV.—Before strongly desiring anything we should examine what happiness he has who possesses it.
