"Humility is often a false front we employ to gain power over others."

"The happiness or unhappiness of men depends as much on their humors as on fortune."

"Fortune and humor govern the world."

"Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind."

"There are few good women who do not tire of their role."

"In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors."

"We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them."

"To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die."

"It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves."

"We pardon to the extent that we love."

"There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune; it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things; it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves."

"Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt."

"Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does."

"I spent the '90s trying to hide out, trying to duck the full celebrity cacophony."

"Heartthrobs are a dime a dozen."

"By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died because of extreme poverty. By this time tomorrow evening, another 30,000. This does not make sense."

"I believe you make your day. You make your life. So much of it is all perception, and this is the form that I built for myself. I have to accept it and work within those compounds, and it's up to me."

"I certainly feel injustice. I'm no foreigner to that, whether it's real or perceived."

"I guess I just don't see America as separate from Vietnam or Ethiopia. This mentality of 'our team's better than yours' - it's a high school idea. My kids don't see those dividing lines, and I don't want to either."

"I've been no stranger to change."

"Deregulation created this epidemic of greed which according to the rules of capitalism was OK. Beyond that there was criminal behaviour. There have been no repercussions and it's hard to make your peace with."

"I don't feel restless, I just like to travel."

"My kids are just waiting for me at home. I'm their father. They're wondering, 'When's Daddy coming home?'"

"Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise."

"Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit."

"We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves."

"The heart is forever making the head its fool."

"No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does."

"We are more often treacherous, through weakness than through calculation."

"A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter."

"A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others."

"A man's worth has its season, like fruit."

"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires."

"As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing."

"Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it."

"Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit."

"Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind."

"Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them."

"Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency."

"Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites."

"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example."

"Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors."

"He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it."

"Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while."

"Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route."

"How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?"

"How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?"

"However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention."

"However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else."

"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue."