The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.
Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.
It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.
There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.
Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment.
It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated; and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.
Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.
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.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune.
Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
