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1. Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.
2. However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
3. True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
4. We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
5. We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
6. Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
7. When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.
8. A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.
9. The passions are the only orators which always persuade.
10. It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
11. If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.
12. There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
13. Some people displease with merit, and others’ very faults and defects are pleasing.
14. We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do.
15. There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
16. Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
17. The greatest part of intimate confidences proceed from a desire either to be pitied or admired.
18. We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.
19. We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
20. It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one’s being clever.