truth, and they hide it from us. We desire flattery, and they
flatter us. We like to be deceived, and they deceive us.

    So each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world
removes us farther from truth, because we are most afraid of
wounding those whose affection is most useful and whose dislike is
most dangerous. A prince may be the byword of all Europe, and he alone
will know nothing of it. I am not astonished. To tell the truth is
useful to those to whom it is spoken, but disadvantageous to those who
tell it, because it makes them disliked. Now those who live with
princes love their own interests more than that of the prince whom
they serve; and so they take care not to confer on him a benefit so as
to injure themselves.

    This evil is no doubt greater and more common among the higher
classes; but the lower are not exempt from it, since there is always
some advantage in making men love us. Human life is thus only a
perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one
speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human
society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if
each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then
spoke in sincerity and without passion.

    Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in
himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell
him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these
dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural
root in his heart.

    101. I set it down as a fact that if all men knew what each said
of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. This is
apparent from the quarrels which arise from the indiscreet tales
told from time to time. I say, further, all men would be...

    102. Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these,
like branches, fall on removal of the trunk.

    103. The example of Alexander's chastity has not made so many
continent as that of his drunkenness has made intemperate. It is not
shameful not to be as virtuous as he, and it seems excusable to be
no more vicious. We do not believe ourselves to be exactly sharing
in the vices of the vulgar when we see that we are sharing in those of
great men; and yet we do not observe that in these matters they are
ordinary men. We hold on to them by the same end by which they hold on
to the rabble; for, however exalted they are, they are still united at
some point to the lowest of men. They are not suspended in the air,
quite removed from our society. No, no; if they are greater than we,
it is because their heads are higher; but their feet are as low as
ours. They are all on the same level, and rest on the same earth;
and by that extremity they are as low as we are, as the meanest
folk, as infants, and as the beasts.

    104. When our passion leads us to do something, we forget our
duty; for example, we like a book and read it, when we ought to be
doing something else. Now, to remind ourselves of our duty, we must
set ourselves a task we dislike; we then plead that we have
something else to do and by this means remember our duty.

    105. How difficult it is to submit anything to the judgement of
another, without prejudicing his judgement by the manner in which we
submit it! If we say, "I think it beautiful," "I think it obscure," or
the like, we either entice the imagination into that view, or irritate
it to the contrary. It is better to say nothing; and then the other
judges according to what really is, that is to say, according as it
then is and according as the other circumstances, not of our making,
have placed it. But we at least shall have added nothing, unless it be
that silence also produces an effect, according to the turn and the
interpretation which the other will be disposed to give it, or as he
will guess it from gestures or countenance, or from the tone of the
voice, if he is a physiognomist. So difficult is it not to upset a
judgement from its natural place, or, rather, so rarely is it firm and
stable!

    106. By knowing each man's ruling passion, we are sure of pleasing
him; and yet each has his fancies, opposed to his true good, in the
very idea which he has of the good. It is a singularly puzzling fact.

    107. Lustravit lampade terras.* - The weather and my mood have
little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my
prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter. I sometimes
struggle against luck, the glory of mastering it makes me master it
gaily; whereas I am sometimes surfeited in the midst of good fortune.

    * Homer, Odyssey, xviii.

    108. Although people may have no interest in what they are saying,
we must not absolutely conclude from this that they are not lying; for
there are some people who lie for the mere sake of lying.

    109. When we are well we wonder what we would do if we were ill,
but when we are ill we take medicine cheerfully; the illness persuades
us to do so. We have no longer the passions and desires for amusements
and promenades which health gave to us, but which are incompatible
with the necessities of illness. Nature gives us, then, passions and
desires suitable to our present state. We are only troubled by the
fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves, for they add to the
state in which we are the passions of the state in which we are not.

    As nature makes us always unhappy in every state, our desires
picture to us a happy state; because they add to the state in which we