When our vices leave us, we flatter ourselves that we have left them.
Feebleness is more opposed to vice than virtue is.
What makes the pangs of shame and jealousy so sharp is that our vanity cannot help us to support them.
What makes the vanity of other persons so intolerable is that it hurts our own.
We have not the courage to say in general that we have no defects, and that our enemies have no good qualities; but in matters of detail we are not very far from believing it.
If we never flattered ourselves the flattery of others Would not injure us.
We sometimes think we dislike flattery; we only dislike the way in which we are flattered.
Flattery is a kind of bad money to which our vanity gives currency.
Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill-conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.
We are so prepossessed in our own favour that we often mistake for virtues those vices that bear some resemblance to them, and are artfully disguised by self-love.