The greatest effort of friendship is not to show our defects to a friend, but to make him see his own.
Sincerity is an opening of the heart. It is found in exceedingly few people, and what passes for it is only a subtle dissimulation used to attract confidence.
We can love nothing except in relation to ourselves, and we merely follow our own bent and pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves; yet it is only by this preference that friendship can be made true and perfect.
It seems as if self-love is the dupe of kindness and that it is forgotten while we are working for the benefit of other men. In this case, however, our self-love is merely taking the safest road to arrive at its ends; it is lending at usury under the pretext of giving, it is aiming at winning all the world by subtle and delicate means.
The first impulses of joy excited in us by the good fortune of our friends proceed neither from our good nature nor from the friendship we have for them; it is an effect of self-love that flatters us with the hope either of being fortunate in our turn or of drawing some advantage from their prosperity.
What makes us so eager to form new acquaintances is not the mere pleasure of change or a weariness of old friendships, so much as a disgust at not being enough admired by those who know us too well, and a hope of winning more admiration from persons who do not know much about us.
III.—Things of the Mind
The mind is always the dupe of the heart. Those who are acquainted with their own mind are not acquainted with their own heart.
The mind is more indolent than the body.
It is the mark of fine intellects to explain many things in a few words; little minds have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.