A friend loves you for your intelligence, a mistress for your charm, but your family's love is unreasoning; you were born into it and are of its flesh and blood. Nevertheless it can irritate you more than any group of people in the world.

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.

Sincerity is glass, discretion is diamond.

I knew a man who had been virtually drowned and then revived. He said that his death had not been painful.

To be witty is not enough. One must possess sufficient wit to avoid having too much of it.

Men and women are not born inconstant: they are made so by their early amorous experiences.

We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.