What makes the vanity of others insupportable is that it wounds our own

Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.

A man who is always satisfied with himself is seldom so with others, and others as little pleased with him

Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.

We refused to assume - one of the central obligations of parenthood: to make ourselves the final authority on good and bad, right and wrong, and to take the consequences of what might turn out to be a lifetime battle