How impossible it is for that Proteus, self-love, to elude the presence of mind, the inexorable eye, the fast hand, of this incredulous Frenchman:—
No. 39. Interest [self-love] speaks all sorts of languages, and plays all sorts of parts, even that of disinterestedness.
No. 49. We are never so happy, or so unhappy, as we imagine.
No. 78. The love of justice is, in most men, only the fear of suffering injustice.
What a subtly unsoldering distrust the following maxim introduces into the sentiment of mutual friendship!—
No. 83. What men have called friendship, is only a partnership, a mutual accommodation of interests, and an exchange of good offices: it is, in short, only a traffic, in which self-love always proposes to gain something.
No. 89. Every one complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.
How striking, from its artful suppression of strikingness, is the first following, and what a wide, easy sweep of well-bred satire it contains!—
No. 93. Old men like to give good advice, to console themselves for being no longer able to give bad examples.