Magdeleine Sable

Good results are sometimes owing to a failure of judgment, because the faculty of judgment often hinders us from undertaking many things which would succeed if carried through without thinking.

It is vain and useless to survey everything that goes on in the world if our study does not help us mend our ways.

One factor that makes it rare for us to find so few people who can carry on an agreeable and rational conversation is that there are practically no people who do not think first of all about what they want to say, rather than responding precisely to what others are saying to them. The politest people are content merely to show an attentive mien, while all the time we see that their eyes and their minds are wandering, and that they are in a rush to return to what they want to say. They should consider that this insistent search for self-satisfaction is a poor way of giving pleasure, and that it is a greater accomplishment to listen well and reply justly than to speak well and often without responding to what others are saying to us.

Social intercourse, even friendship among most people, is a merely a business arrangement that lasts only so long as there is need.

Although most friendships that exist do not merit the name, we can nevertheless make use of them in accordance with our needs, as a kind of commercial venture based on uncertain foundations and in which we are very often deceived.

Often our good deeds make enemies for us, and the ungrateful person despises us on two counts; for he is not only unwilling to acknowledge the gratitude he owes us: he does not want to have his benefactor as witness to his thankless behavior.

True merit does not depend on the times or on fashion. Those who have no other advantage than courtly manners lose it when they are away from court. But good sense, knowledge, and wisdom make their possessors knowledgeable and beloved in all ages and in all times.

It is sometimes useful to pretend we are deceived, because when we show a deceiving man that we see through his artifices, we only encourage him to increase his deceptions.

It is a very trying task for deceitful people, always to have to cover up their lack of sincerity and to repair the breaking of their word.

Often the desire to appear competent impedes our ability to become competent, because we more anxious to display our knowledge than to learn what we do not know.