Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself. - Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues

No one says in the morning: A day is soon past, let us wait for the night. On the contrary, in the evening we consider what we shall do the next day. We should be very sorry to spend even one day at the mercy of time and bores. … Who can be certain of spending an hour without being bored, if he takes no care to fill even that short period according to his pleasure. Yet what we cannot be certain of for an hour, we sometimes feel assured of for life, and say: “If death is the end of everything, why give ourselves so much trouble? We are extremely foolish to make such a pother about the future”—that is to say, we are extremely foolish not to entrust our destinies to chance, and to provide for the interval which lies between us and death.

Is it against justice or reason to love ourselves? And why is self-love always a vice?

Reason and emotion counsel and supplement each other. Whoever heeds only the one, and puts aside the other, recklessly deprives himself of a portion of the aid granted us for the regulation of our conduct.