Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

• 

  The desire to appear clever often prevents one from becoming so.

• 

  We should desire few things ardently if we knew perfectly what we desire.

• 

  Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man, and often makes the most foolish clever.

• 

  He who thinks he can find in himself the means of doing without others is much mistaken; but he who thinks others cannot do without him is still more mistaken.

• 

  We should often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world saw all the motives that produce them.

• 

  Self-love is cleverer than the cleverest man in the world.

All aphorisms