No one deserves to be praised for kindness if he does not have the strength to be bad; every other form of kindness is most often merely laziness or lack of willpower.It is more often pride than lack of enlightenment that makes us oppose so stubbornly the generally accepted view of something. We find the front seats already taken on the correct side, and we do not want any of the back ones.Small-mindedness leads to stubbornness; it is hard for us to believe anything that goes beyond what we see.We are deceiving ourselves if we think that only the violent passions, such as ambition and love, can conquer the others. Laziness, sluggish though it is, often manages to dominate them; it wrests from us all of life’s plans and deeds, where it imperceptibly destroys and devours the passions and virtues alike.Hardly any man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.Honors won are down payments for those still to be won.We always like those who admire us, and we do not always like those whom we admire.We are very far from knowing all our wishes.Whatever good is said about us never teaches us anything new.We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.The reason why lovers are never bored with each other’s company is because they are always talking about themselves.The extreme pleasure we take in talking about ourselves should make us afraid that we may scarcely be giving any to our listeners.We find very few sensible people except those who agree with our own opinion.However we may mistrust the sincerity of those who talk to us, we always think they are more truthful with us than with other people.Nearly all of our faults are more forgivable than the means we use to hide them.We pride ourselves on faults that are opposite to those we really have; when we are weak, we boast that we are being stubborn.We criticize ourselves only to be praised.Only people with some strength of character can be truly gentle: usually, what seems like gentleness is mere weakness, which readily turns to bitterness.