One of the reasons that we find so few persons rational and agreeable in conversation is there is hardly a person who does not think more of what he wants to say than of his answer to what is said. The most clever and polite are content with only seeming |
One sort of inconstancy springs from levity or weakness of mind, and makes us accept everyone's opinion, and another more excusable comes from a surfeit of matter. |
One who finds no satisfaction in himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere |
Only in things of small value we usually are bold enough not to trust to appearances. |
Only the great can afford to have great defects. |
Opportunity makes us known to others, but more to ourselves. |
Ordinary men commonly condemn what is beyond them. |
Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please. |
Our distrust of another justifies his deceit. |
Our enemies approach nearer to truth in their judgments of us than we do ourselves |
Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves. |
Our pride is often increased by what we retrench from our other faults. |
Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us in consequence |
Our self love endures more impatiently the condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions. |
Our temper sets a price upon every gift that we receive from fortune. |