When Our Vices Desert Us, We Flatter

What We Take For Virtue Is Often Nothing But An Assemblage Of Different Actions, And Of Different Interests, That Fortune Or Our Industry Knows How To Arrange.

Nothing Is So Contagious As Example; Never Was There Any Considerable Good Or Ill Done That Does Not Produce Its Like. We Imitate Good Actions Through Emulation, And Had Ones Through A Malignity In Our Nature, Which Shame Conceals, And Example Sets At Liberty.

Commonplace Minds Usually Condemn What Is Beyond The Reach Of Their Understanding.

Whatever Pretext We May Give For Our Affections, Often It Is Only Interest And Vanity Which Cause Them.

Virtue Would Go Far If Vanity Did Not Keep It Company.